Badoer on top in tight FREC practice sessions at Paul Ricard

Photo: Dutch Photo Agency

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Brando Badoer set the fastest times in both of Formula Regional Europe’s practice sessions at Paul Ricard.

However, ultimately just 0.006 seconds separated the top three, with Prema’s Rafael Camara and James Wharton almost matching Badoer’s 1m59.050s FP2 benchmark as all drivers, except Lena Buhler, bettered their FP1 times.

Michael Belov, still deputising for Roman Bilinski at Trident, was on the pace throughout the day and ended it fourth fastest overall, with VAR’s Ivan Domingues in fifth.

Badoer’s gap over his rivals was much greater in the cooler morning session, as he outpaced Camara by over half a second and set three laps that each would have been good enough to top the timesheet.

The Trident trio of Ruiqi Liu, Belov and Niko Lacorte set the early pace, before ART Grand Prix’s Alessandro Giusti and Evan Giltaire moved to the front.

However, R-ace GP’s Enzo Deligny was the first driver to dip below 2m01s with a 2m00.971s set 13 minutes in.

With 30 minutes remaining, Badoer jumped to the top, and despite being pushed back by Camara was able to regain first place at the session’s midway point and was then never headed.

Badoer set his best time on his final lap, including two fastest sector times, as he smashed his own previous best by 0.369s. Belov was third fastest.

Ivan Domingues took fourth to underline VAR’s pace, with Deligny and Giusti the only other drivers to break the two-minute barrier.

Belov was immediately on the pace again in FP2, setting a 1m59.728s to be on top at the end of the first runs, with Badoer just 0.088s behind.

Belov was unchallenged until the final 10 minutes as laptimes began to tumble, although it was Belov himself who made the first improvement before Badoer promptly responded.

R-ace’s Tuukka Taponen briefly assumed the top spot with six minutes left, before being demoted again by Belov.

With just over four minutes remaining, Camara jumped from sixth to first with a 1m59.053s, but Badoer was not to be beaten, lowering the best time by 0.003s before red flags brought practice to a close one minute early.

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