Camara clinches FREC crown as Wharton wins again at Barcelona

Photo: Dutch Photo Agency

Rafael Camara became Formula Regional Europe champion with a round to spare in race two at Barcelona.

The Prema driver started and finished fourth in a quiet race for him, as Prema team-mate James Wharton converted his fifth pole of the season into his fourth victory.

The first three laps ran primarily behind the safety car due to a crash at the opening corners. Van Amersfoort Racing’s Brando Badoer hit the kerbs on the very inside of turn one and then Sainteloc Racing’s Matteo De Palo, which sent the latter into a spin and earned Badoer a 10-second penalty.

The rear of De Palo’s car knocked out R-ace GP’s Tuukka Taponen on the left, immediately ending Taponen’s title aspirations having been Camara’s closest rival in the points, and then Trident’s Ruiqi Liu on the right as it completed a full rotation.

Wharton had weaved his way down to turn one from pole prior to the safety car pausing proceedings, and led ART Grand Prix’s Alessandro Giusti, VAR’s Pedro Clerot, Camara and G4 Racing’s Kanato Le.

The same approach was used by Wharton on the restart, and the top three briefly broke away. There was an incident at turn one again as Sainteloc’s Enzo Peugeot tried overtaking Trident’s Roman Bilinski for seventh and it resulted in Bilinski losing his front wing and having to pit.

Wharton took two laps to create a gap of a second up front, with the field mostly spreading out bar the battle for ninth between ART GP’s Evan Giltaire and Sainteloc’s Theophile Nael. There was one move on lap six, but Nael had gone off so gave the place back, then a brave overtake earned him the spot on lap nine and Prema’s Ugo Ugochukwu followed him through two corners later as Giltaire got compromised.

Nael then went around the outside of Badoer at turn one the next lap, a Badoer had lost ground by going off on the run down to the final corners before that.

As Nael started to close in on Race Performance Motorsport’s Noah Stromsted and Peugeot over the next laps, further up the road Wharton was setting fastest laps to extend his lead and Clerot was applying pressure on Giusti.

With two laps to go, Giusti put a wheel off track exiting the final corner and enabled Clerot to get even closer. He stuck his nose in at turn one on the last lap but could not make a move happen, and had to settle for third.

Outside of the points, MP Motorsport pair Nikita Bedrin and Nikhil Bohra sent each other into the gravel with two laps left of the race but were able to rejoin and no yellow flags were needed.

Race result (18 laps)