ART GP’s Evan Giltaire quickest on day two of FREC testing at Barcelona

Photo: FRECA

ART Grand Prix’s Evan Giltaire led the way on Formula Regional European Championship’s second pre-season test day at Barcelona.

He topped the morning session, in which everyone set their best laps of the day. Giltaire’s 1m35.424s benchmark was posted on his 16th lap. He would do a further 35 before the chequered flag waved, a tally that nobody else reached.

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Pedro Clerot got closest to his pace, being 0.182 seconds off and posting his personal best with over half an hour of the session left. At that point nine drivers on track, including the top two, and following that there were no changes to the order. Everyone was in the pits when the session ended.

Prema’s Freddie Slater was third, 0.01s off Clerot, and VAR’s Hiyu Yamakoshi was a further 0.011s behind.

R-ace GP’s Enzo Deligny completed a top five covered by 0.3s, and 16 drivers were within a second of Giltaire’s pace. There was one red flag period, caused by ART GP’s Kanato Le getting beached in the gravel at turn two.

At the bottom of the order were Sainteloc Racing’s Yaroslav Veselaho and G4 Racing’s Edouard Borgna, some way off everyone else.

G4’s only signing at present is Borgna, who was announced at the end of March. The 20-year-old Frenchman steps up to FRegional after two years in Formula 4.

As a rookie in French F4 he came last in the championship, then in his sophomore campaign scored one point to improve to 19th in the table. He also contested the Formula Winter Series with Jenzer Motorsport in 2024, and was a points-free 43rd in the standings.

Veselaho emerged as the driver to beat early in the afternoon session, setting a 1m37.948s while alone on track. With two-and-a-half hours left, only four others had recorded laptimes and Veselaho had already put down a laptime he would be unable to improve on.

A few minutes later, R-ace’s Akshay Bohra moved into first place by 0.054s, and the number of drivers who had set flying laps doubled to 10. Bohra’s team-mate Jin Nakamura also snuck ahead of Yeselaho, which demoted Sainteloc’s Nikita Bedrin and Trident’s Ruiqi Liu too, and with two hours to go CL Motorsport’s Maceo Capietto went sixth fastest.

Matteo De Palo left the pits three times without ever completing a timed lap, then after doing three more runs the Trident driver went fastest by almost half a second with a 1m37.398s. Giltaire meanwhile had not left the pits at all for half of the session, but went ninth quickest when he eventually did.

CL’s Zachary David usurped De Palo by 0.1s with half an hour to go, as Capietto improved to third with a 1m37.614s. He concluded his second run by then getting within 0.015s of David.

Race Performance Motorsport’s Enzo Yeh improved twice in the final 10 minutes, and CL’s drivers were the only ones out at the end. Both improved on their final efforts, with a 1m37.190s putting Capietto 0.038s ahead.

Day two results