Freddie Slater flies to pole in first qualifying of FREC season

Photo: ACI Sport

Freddie Slater dominated qualifying for the opening round of the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine at Misano.

The Prema driver continued his strong form at the tight and twisty Adriatic circuit, having taken a clean sweep of pole positions and race wins last year in Italian Formula 4, to set the two fastest times of qualifying, ahead of team-mate Rashid Al Dhaheri.

However, Trident’s Matteo De Palo will line up alongside Slater on the front row after topping the times in the slower of the two qualifying groups.

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Hiyu Yamakoshi, who impressed at this circuit last year in F4, was the first to set a representative time in Group A with a lap in 1m30.616s, with R-ace GP’s Akshary Bohra slotting into second, 0.089s behind.

Only seven cars had representative times on the board when the session was suspended with Akcel GP’s Aditya Kulkarni in the gravel at Turn 13. The remaining 12 runners filed out immediately when the session resumed with seven minutes remaining.

Yamakoshi improved straight away, dropping into the 1m29s, before being displaced by Trident’s Matteo de Palo with a 1m29.106s. Two of the championship favourites, VAR’s Pedro Clerot and ART Grand Prix’s Evan Giltaire also moved into the top three.

Both de Palo and Giltaire were setting personal sector best times on their final laps, the Frenchman crossing the line first to go to the top with a 1m28.975s. De Palo was still improving and was one of the last to take the chequered flag, edging out Giltaire by 0.181s to top the group.

Clerot was unable to improve and will line up on row three, with ART GP’s Kanato Le and Sainteloc Racing’s Nikita Bedrin lining up behind the Brazilian after also improving on their final laps.

Slater was immediately on the pace in Group B, jumping to the front with his fourth lap, his time of 1m28.771s putting him 0.023s ahead of R-ace GP’s Jin Nakamura, and crucially, faster than De Palo’s Group A benchmark.

Slater was improving his times lap-by-lap, on the following tour he lowered the best time by 0.178s, with a stunning 1m28.593s.

Nakamura was holding onto second, with Prema’s Rashi Al Dhaheri moving up to third.

Slater, however, wasn’t finished, setting sector bests in all four sectors on his seventh lap, to cross the line in 1m28.373s, as team-mate Al Dhaheri moved into second, 0.152s adrift.

Any final lap improvements were thwarted by a late red flag as the second Akcel GP car of Saqer Al Maosherji also spun, bringing out the red flag.

Qualifying results