Bolukbasi betters Crawford in Euroformula free practice battle

Photo: Fotospeedy

Cem Bolukbasi produced a late flurry of quick laps to set the pace in Euroformula’s second free practice session at the Red Bull Ring.

The Turkish driver just pipped Jak Crawford at the end of the session, and Crawford had to settle for best of the rest for the second time today.

Red Bull junior Crawford was the early pacesetter, having been the only driver in the first half of the 40-minute period to set a sub-1m24s lap.

After setting the fastest lap on his seventh tour of the circuit, Crawford set four more efforts that were faster as he dominated the majority of the session.

He appeared on course to remain unthreatened in this position before Van Amersfoort Racing’s Bolukbasi hit the top by almost four-tenths.

Behind the top two, times were traded between Josh Mason, Rafael Villagomez, and Louis Foster, before points leader (and the quickest driver in FP1) Cameron Das set a 1m23.717s for third place.

The American seemed to struggle to keep up with the pace set by his American team-mate before a late change for more front wing appeared to unlock more from his car. However, he remained almost six-tenths off session-topper Bolukbasi by the end.

Villagomez eventually settled in fourth place ahead of Foster, and Casper Stevenson was sixth. After the session ended there was some shuffling of the order with deleted laptimes though, and Foster moved up to third ahead of Das and Villagomez.

Carlin’s Enzo Trulli was the last driver to post a sub-1m24s time in eighth, with his new team-mate Brad Benavides making up the top 10 just behind Nazim Azman.

Formula 3 seat-swappers Zdenek Chovanec and Reshad de Gerus were both within a tenth of Benavides in 11th and 12th respectively.

Propping up the timing sheets and over two seconds off the pace was Filip Kaminiarz, as Enzo Scionti avoided the slowest time in consecutive sessions by beating the Pole by a tenth.

Free practice results