Giusti comfortably quickest in chilly FREC testing at Red Bull Ring

Photo: Dutch Photo Agency

ART Grand Prix’s Alessandro Giusti was comfortably quickest in Formula Regional European Championship pre-event testing at the Red Bull Ring.

The test took place over two sessions, the first scheduled to last one hour-and-45 minutes and the second for two hours-and-15 minutes. It was wet and chilly for both sessions, with air temperatures dipping to six degrees above freezing.

No laptimes were set until 21 minutes into session one, with R-ace GP’s Tuukka Taponen posting a 1m50.119s. Two seconds later his team-mate Enzo Deligny beat him by two seconds, then Taponen lowered the pace on his next two laps.

His 1m44.439s benchmark was beaten by a 1m44.204s from KIC Motorsport’s Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi, who spent 85s on top of the times before Giusti set a 1m44.193s, then over the next three minutes there was more new names appearing in first place.

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Ivan Domingues posted a 1m43.979s, ART GP’s Evan Giltaire beat that by a second, and Prema’s James Wharton was able to better him by 0.568s. Just after the half-hour mark, VAR’s Brando Badoer skimmed 0.085s off Wharton’s benchmark, and two-and-a-half minutes after that Giusti set a 1m41.417s that put him on top by a big margin and would not be beaten despite some drivers continiung to set laps over the next hour.

There was far less track activity in what ended up being a lengthened session two, and it was only after almost 127 minutes had passed that the first laptime appeared on the timing screen.

Giusti and Giltaire were the drivers to beat, trading fastest laps for a few minutes and bringing the pace down into the 1m43s. Prema’s Rafael Camara and Wharton then took over the top when they headed out, before Giltaire posted a 1m42.516s and then a 1m42.329s to move back ahead.

That was beaten before the day ended, with Prema’s Ugo Ugochukwu pipping him by 0.089s. Wharton was 0.526s behind in third, Camara trailed by 0.736s in fourth and Race Performance Motorsport’s Noah Stromsted was over a second off the pace in fifth.

Ugochukwu, Giltaire, Trident’s Roman Bilinski, Iron Dames’ Doriane Pin and G4 Racing’s Romain Andriolo were the only improvers in the afternoon, with MP Motorsport’s drivers absent from the action and having combined only set 20 laps between the three of them in the morning. Despite only setting 11 laps in total, MP’s Nikita Bedrin was second fastest overall.

Test results