Camara flies to his fourth FREC pole at Paul Ricard

Photo: Dutch Photo Agency

A stunning lap in qualifying put Prema’s Rafael Camara on pole for Formula Regional Europe race one at Paul Ricard.

The championship leader topped Group A by 0.291 seconds from Van Amersfoort Racing’s free practice pacesetter Brando Badoer.

Trident’s Michael Belov will start alongside Camara after pipping R-ace GP’s Tuukka Taponen to top spot in Group B on his final lap. Belov, deputising for the injured Roman Bilinski, went fastest in both the second and third sectors to edge the Ferrari junior by just 0.071s.

Prema’s James Wharton had looked on target to match both but a mistake on his final flying lap relegated him to third in a close group, with 0.458s separating the top seven drivers.

Camara and Badoer set a blistering pace in Group A, finishing the session half-a-second clear of VAR’s Ivan Domingues in third.

Camara jumped to the top of the timesheet with a 1m58.479s lap set with just over four minutes remaining, putting him 0.721s clear of Badoer at the time. He improved again on his next lap, lowering the benchmark to 1m58.027s, with Badoer unable to match hi  despite a rapid middle sector.

Neither driver was able to improve in the final minutes, despite Badoer going fastest of all in the first sector.

Sainteloc Racing’s Enzo Peugeot continued his strong form, running as high as third before a late improvement from last year’s poleman Alessandro Giusti pushed him back to fifth at the flag.

The R-ace duo of Taponen and Enzo Deligny set the early pace in Group B as track temperatures edged upwards under clear blue skies.

However, with just under five minutes remaining Belov jumped to the front with the first sub-1m59s lap of the group.

Although Belov improved by 0.297s on his next tour, both Taponen and then Wharton were flying, pushing the Russian back to third.

After a lap to cool down the tyres before a final push, Taponen appeared to have secured a front row start before Belov flashed across the line to nab top spot.

Prema’s Ugo Ugochukwu ended the session in fourth ahead of VAR’s Pedro Clerot.

Ugochukwu was allowed to participate in the session despite having been provisionally disqualified from the event for exceeding the maximum two engines permitted for use for the entire season.

Should FREC’s technical delegate subsequently determine that either of his previous two engines had not suffered a failure, the disqualification will become valid, and he will be required to fit one of the original engines for the next round.

Qualifying results