Beganovic fastest on first morning of FIA F3’s post-season Imola test

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Prema’s Dino Beganovic set the pace on the first morning of FIA Formula 3’s post-season test at Imola.

PHM Racing was the team to beat at first, with Joshua Duerksen setting the first flying lap 35 minutes into the three-hour session.

Two seconds later his team-mate Joshua Dufek went 2.8 seconds faster with a 1m35.204s, and the pace was lowered even further two miutes later by Van Amersfoort Racing’s drivers. Noel Leon set a 1m33.877s, and Tommy Smith then posted a 1m33.682s.

Dufek returned to the top by going 0.211s faster than Smith, then Leon lowered the pace by 0.181s. His team-mates went even faster than him, with Smith setting the first sub-1m32s lap then Sophia Floersch recording a 1m32.511s.

Leon went fastest again by 0.08s, then headed to the pits. A few minutes later Luke Browning became the driver to beat, lowering the pace three times and starting the second hour with a 1m31.059s.

That laptime was enough to keep Browning on top for 87 minutes, with many drivers spending most of that time in the pits.

Campos Racing’s Oliver Goethe was his closest rival for a prolonged period, then Beganovic got within 0.022s of Browning’s pace in the final hour before also pitting. Goethe was shuffled down to fourth by Gabriele Mini, who was also driving for Prema.

Mari Boya lapped just 0.012s off Browning’s benchmark with 36 minutes to go, and a few laps later he finally usurped the Hitech driver by becoming the first driver to lap in the 1m30s.

He went fastest by 0.093s, and one of the drivers looking to match his pace was Mini but he suffered a technical problem and stopped on track in sector two. That led to red flags being waved, and after the session restarted Beganovic beat Boya by 0.02s with seven minutes to go before red flags appeared again and the session was ended early.

Morning session results