Photo: FRME
The Formula Regional Middle East title fight was at the heart of the action in qualifying for the final round at Losail.
Points leader Evan Giltaire qualified on race one pole by topping the first qualifying session, with his main rival Freddie Slater lining up fourth.
R-ace GP led the way at first in Q1 with its four drivers, but no representative laptimes were set until the second half of the 15-minute session.
Ugo Ugochukwu posted a 1m50.085s, which half a minute later was beaten by a 1m49.823s from ART Grand Prix’s Giltaire.
Every driver bar Origine Motorsport’s Zhongwei Wang completed five laps, and everyone set their personal bests on their fourth tour of the circuit.
Mumbai Falcons’ Rashid Al Dhaheri and Slater were 0.37s off the pace in third and fourth, and R-ace’s Enzo Deligny was fifth. Over a second slower than Giltaire were his team-mates Kanato Le and Taito Kato in sixth and seventh, and there was a second between sixth and 15th place.
PHM Racing’s Brando Badoer, who along with R-ace’s Ugochukwu is a title outsider, had a shocker of a session as he was 9.467s slower than Giltaire.
In Q2, flying laps were quicker to appear and Evans GP’s Matteo De Palo recorded the first two times to beat. His laps in the 1m50s were not good enough to retain a top-10 place though, and Giltaire knocked him off top spot with a 1m49.661s.
The Frenchman proved unable to improve on that short-lived benchmark, which was beaten 12s later by a 1m49.212s from Ugochukwu.
He ended up claiming race three pole by 0.146s over Slater, and just pipping Deligny to third was Sainteloc Racing’s Nikita Bedrin.
Mumbai Falcons’ Jack Beeton demoted Giltaire to sixth, with De Palo improving but only back up to seventh ahead of Le, Al Dhaheri and R-ace’s Jin Nakamura.
Badoer struggles again, and while he was only 1.05s off the pole time he qualified a lowly 15th.
Results round-up
Qualifying 1
1 Evan Giltaire ART Grand Prix 1m49.823s
2 Ugo Ugochukwu R-ace GP +0.262s
3 Rashid Al Dhaheri Mumbai Falcons +0.370s
4 Freddie Slater Mumbai Falcons +0.378s
5 Enzo Deligny R-ace GP +0.697s
6 Kanato Le ART Grand Prix +1.023s
7 Taito Kato ART Grand Prix +1.216s
8 Nikita Bedrin Sainteloc Racing +1.234s
9 Akshay Bohra R-ace GP +1.354s
10 Jin Nakamura R-ace GP +1.418s
Qualifying 2
1 Ugochukwu 1m49.212s
2 Slater +0.146s
3 Bedrin +0.277s
4 Deligny +0.284s
5 Jack Beeton Mumbai Falcons +0.448s
6 Giltaire +0.449s
7 Matteo De Palo Evans GP +0.546s
8 Le +0.604s
9 Al Dhaheri +0.713s
10 Nakamura +0.779s