Carrasquedo wins at Aragon, Eurocup-3 leader Sagrera lasts one corner

Photo: Eurocup-3

Jesse Carrasquedo took a first Eurocup-3 victory in race one at Motorland Aragon, which points leader Javier Sagrera retired from on lap one.

Campos Racing driver Carrasquedo pipped team-mate Christian Ho to top spot in the opening practice session by 0.078 seconds, setting a 1m53.150s on his penultimate lap. MP Motorsport’s Sagrera and Owen Tangavelou were 0.252s and 0.316s behind in third and fourth, and 0.968s covered the top 19.

Ho and Global Racing Service’s Isaac Barashi had their fastest laps deleted for causing red flag periods.

In FP2, the pace was lowered to 1m53.127s by GRS’s cameoing Hadrien David. There was a flurry of late improvements, and he had set his fastest lap earlier on. MP’s Bruno del Pino got within 0.007s of him at the end, with Sagrera just 0.029s behind in third. Tangavelou was fourth, 0.312s off the top.

The fight to be fastest was almost as close in qualifying, which Carrasquedo topped by just 0.01s over Sagrera having set a 1m53.504 on his penultimate lap. Ho was third, only 0.052s off pole, and Tangavelou occupied fourth place again.

Gaspard Le Gallais and Dario Cabanelas had all of their laptimes deleted due to track limits violations, Alexander Abkhazava had his only laptime deleted for causing a red flag period, and Joao Diaz had his best lap deleted for the same reason and ended up in 24th place. GRS’s debuting Douwe Dedecker meanwhile went 17th fastest but was handed a five-place grid penalty.

Single-seater returnees David and Pierre-Louis Chovet (Palou Motorsport) were eighth and 19th.

Sagrera was slow off the line in the race, immediately battling Tangavelou while Ho took second place. Tangavelou found a gap between the pit wall and his team-mate approaching the first corner, but as they turned in the front-right of his car made contact with the rear-left of Sagrera’s and sent him spinning.

Unable to get going again, Sagrera had to retire and the safety car was called. Tangavelou also later retired.

Campos’s Michael Shin and David sat in third and fourth, with del Pino rising in fifth.

Carrasquedo weaved down the back straight on the lap four restart, and Ho tried going around his outside at the end of it. He went into lap five 0.07s behind, and stuck to the outside at turn one where he did get ahead but went off.

Ho relinquished the position before trying to pass at turn 16 again, and they again went side-by-side through the final corners and were split by just 0.105s as lap six began.

A small gap then opened up, before Ho attacked again on lap 11. There was no way through, and a sliding moment on lap 15 cost him time. They finished the 16-lap encounter 0.392s apart, with Shin 7.549s behind.

A five-second penalty for track limits abuse dropped David from fourth to seventh, and he had been under late pressure from Sainteloc Racing’s Jose Garfias late.

Del Pino ran behind Garfias through the race’s second half after being overtaken, and there was lots of swapping of positions between Nikola Tsolov (GRS), Valentin Kluss (Campos) and Daniel Nogales (Sainteloc Racing) a few seconds behind.

Tsolov finished sixth, Kluss was eighth and Nogales was between them before a track limits penalty demoted him to 12th.

Race results (16 laps)