Carrasquedo tops the times in testing and practice at Paul Ricard

Photo: Eurocup-3

Campos Racing’s Jesse Carrasquedo Jr only needed two flying laps in Eurocup-3 practice at Paul Ricard to set the pace.

The Mexican had already started his Friday strongly, as he had gone fastest in pre-event testing.

In session one, it was the rival MP Motorsport team that had the advantage at first. Its drivers Alexander Abkhazava, Andres Cardenas and Maciej Gladysz all spent time at the top, with Gladysz the first to post a sub-2m01s lap almost seven minutes into the half-hour session.

Campos then came to the fore, and Jules Caranta was the first of its drivers to lead the way. He set a 2m00.396s to beat Gladysz by 0.495 seconds, and a minute later Kacper Sztuka went even quicker by 0.141s.

Caranta responded on his next lap, improving to 1m59.835s, but that did not keep him on top for long as Palou Motorsport’s James Egozi soon pipped him by 0.033s. On his next lap Caranta set another personal best, and reclaimed top spot by 0.079s.

Carrasquedo came to the fore a minute later, posting a 1m59.631s that would be a long-standings benchmark. When Gladysz did eventually beat it, by 0.231s, the response from Carrasquedo was a 1m59.115s. He ended the session fastest by 0.185s over Caranta. Gladysz was third, Campos’s Ernesto Rivera improved to fourth and MP’s Mattia Colnaghi was fifth.

Only Palou’s Luciano Morano set a personal best in session two. Sainteloc Racing’s Garrett Berry was the benchmark driver early on, then Egozi began making big improvements and brought the pace down to 2m00.088s.

Colnaghi briefly bettered him, but was knocked back to second by 0.025s. MP’s Valerio Rinicella was 0.114s back in third, and 0.004s ahead of Gladysz.

Practice ran green throughout, and was very calm. Colnaghi posted a 2m01.355s four minutes in, Campos’s Enzo Tarnvanichkul beat him by 0.644s three minutes later then Carrasquedo did not appear on track until the final 10 minutes.

His first flying lap was a 2m00.513s, making him fastest by 0.198s, then he improved to 2m00.184s before pitting.

Rivera got within 0.173s of Carrasquedo, Colnaghi improved to 2m00.371s in third and Sztuka was 0.277s behind fourth. Rinicella and Tarnvanichkul were the only other drivers within half a second of the pace, and set considerably more laps than Carrasquedo, and a second covered the top 12.

Free practice results