Colnaghi reclaims Eurocup-3 lead with Assen win as Rivera non-scores

Photo: Eurocup-3

MP Motorsport’s Mattia Colnaghi reclaimed the Eurocup-3 points lead with a lights-to-flag victory in race one at Assen.

Coming into the weekend as points leader was Campos Racing’s Ernesto Rivera, and he was the first driver to post a representative laptime in qualifying on Saturday orning. On his following lap he improved to 1m31.686s.

He was beaten in the second half of the 20-minute session, with Allay Racing’s Michael Belov going fastest by 0.3 seconds, and then MP’s Valerio Rinicella lowering the pace to 1m30.777s a minute later.

That lap ended up being good enough for second on the grid, as in the remaining seven minutes only Colnaghi was able to go faster than him with a 1m30.576s.

Rinicella did improve slightly to end qualifying 0.188s behind, with a 1m30.821s putting Belov third. Everyone else was over half a second off pole and in the 1m31s or 1m32s. Kacper Sztuka (Campos) pipped Andres Cardenas (MP) to fourth, and James Egozi (Palou Motorsport) took sixth by 0.017s over Jesse Carrasquedo Jr (Campos).

The top 10 was completed by Enzo Tarnvanichkul (Campos), Alexander Abkhazava and Emmo Fittipaldi (both MP), with pre-event points leader Rivera 0.921s off the pace in 13th despite a late improvement.

Colnaghi made a great start from pole, so good that he was put under investigation for jumping the lights, and Belov had an off halfway through lap one but retained third.

Two thirds of a second split them as they began lap two, and Belov attacked Rinicella through turns three to five. On the following straight, Colnaghi was having to weave though as Rinicella closed onto his rear.

Belovset the fastest lap on lap four but had fallen 1.15s behind the leader, and by lap eight he was over two seconds behind while Colnaghi had snatched the fastest lap to grow his lead over Rinicella to 0.65s.

He broke the one-second barrier after nine laps, and had a 1.6s gap on lap 14 of 21 when Rinicella took the fastest lap by 0.001s and began closing back in. As Rinicella went even faster he got within 0.7s of Colnaghi, but the leader responded to put 1.12s between them again.

Soon the victory fight was over, as Rinicella took too much kerb on lap 18 and the mistake cost him time. Colnaghi was 2.769s ahead by the finish, and Rinicella had a similar gap to Belov.

Many of the positions behind were settled on lap one, with Cardenas, Sztuka, Carrasquedo completing the top six.

Egozi and Abkhazava went off on lap 10 when the latter made a late attempt at an overtake for seventh, but Egozi held his position to the end.

Campos’s Francisco Macedo was behind them until a lap three spin sent him to the back, and on lap 19 team-mates Jules Caranta fell down the order then pitted after an incident with Abkhazava. Fittipialdi profited to pass Abkhazava for eighth, and Rivera was promoted to the final points position after a race-long defence against MP’s Maciej Gladysz.

But five-second penalties for track limits abuse meant Abkhazava and Rivera were classified 12th and 13th and Gladysz and Tarnvanichkul were lifted into the top 10. Rivera’s non-score demotes him to third in the standings, with Colnaghi now leading Rinicella by

Palou team-mates Zack Scoular and Lenny Ried were close all race, with Scoular getting ahead for 20th on lap 17. But he got a 10s track limits penalty, so finished 25th behind Macedo.

Race results (21 laps)