Photo: FRMEC
The Indian teams led the way on the second day of pre-event testing at Kuwait Motor Town for the Formula Regional Middle East championship.
The first of two sessions on Thursday was shortened by a lengthy red flag period,and the majority of the action came in the first 10 minutes.
Mumbai Falcons’ Lorenzo Fluxa was first to the top after four minutes, then Prema’s Michael Shin went 0.855 seconds faster two minutes later. He was eclipsed to the tune of 4.134s by R&B Racing’s Giovanni Maschio moments after, then Fluxa returned to the top with a 1m50.889s lap.
His team-mate Dino Beganovic bettered that by 0.059s, and Andrea Kimi Antonelli in the third of the team’s cars went 0.619s faster.
He was on top for less than two minutes before Beganovic became the first driver to lap sub-1m50s, and Hyderabad Blackbirds powered by MP driver Sami Meguetounif maximised the slipstream behind him to immediately knock 0.780s off the benchmark time.
Meguetounif’s team-mate Joshua Duerksen bettered him by 1.113s, a gap that had closed to 0.233s before the pair headed to the pits.
R-ace GP’s Nikhil Bohra managed to match Meguetounif’s laptime to a thousandth of a second, anf Fluxa went fourth fastest before the session-ending red flags came out.
Duerksen and Meguetounif were shuffled down to sixth and 10th overall on the combined timesheet following session two as they failed to improve, while their team-mate Mari Boya set the pace.
Hitech GP’s Luke Browning, and Pinnacle VAR’s Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak and Pepe Marti disputed first place early on, before Mumbai Falcons’ Rafael Camara dropped the pace.
He was bettered by team-mate Antonelli with 23 minutes to go, and the next pacesetter was Fluxa who went fastest by 0.003s. Browning went 0.029s faster than that to reclaim first place with 10 minutes remaining, but moments later Antonelli took a big chunk out of everyone else.
Beganovic managed to close the gap to 0.084s, and then Boya jumped from 14th from first with minutes to spare and before the session was then ended by red flags.
Joining the morning top two as non-improvers in session two were Bohra, Matias Zagazeta and Zhongwei Wang.
Test day two results
| Pos | Driver | Team | Time | Gaps | Laps |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Mari Boya | Hyderabad Blackbirds | 1m47.584s | 21 | |
| 2 | Andrea Kimi Antonelli | Mumbai Falcons | 1m47.767s | +0.183s | 38 |
| 3 | Dino Beganovic | Mumbai Falcons | 1m47.851s | +0.267s | 42 |
| 4 | Luke Browning | Hitech GP | 1m48.018s | +0.434s | 40 |
| 5 | Lorenzo Fluxa | Mumbai Falcons | 1m48.035s | +0.451s | 42 |
| 6 | Joshua Duerksen | Hyderabad Blackbirds | 1m48.084s | +0.500s | 32 |
| 7 | Gabriele Mini | Hitech GP | 1m48.177s | +0.593s | 37 |
| 8 | Taylor Barnard | PHM Racing | 1m48.185s | +0.601s | 30 |
| 9 | Rafael Camara | Mumbai Falcons | 1m48.242s | +0.658s | 37 |
| 10 | Sami Meguetounif | Hyderabad Blackbirds | 1m48.317s | +0.733s | 29 |
| 11 | Nikhil Bohra | R-ace GP | 1m48.317s | +0.733s | 38 |
| 12 | Pepe Marti | Pinnacle VAR | 1m48.331s | +0.747s | 29 |
| 13 | Brad Benavides | Hyderabad Blackbirds | 1m48.377s | +0.793s | 16 |
| 14 | Sebastian Montoya | Hitech GP | 1m48.443s | +0.859s | 39 |
| 15 | Aiden Neate | Prema | 1m48.452s | +0.868s | 39 |
| 16 | Francesco Braschi | R-ace GP | 1m48.528s | +0.944s | 38 |
| 17 | Matias Zagazeta | R-ace GP | 1m48.697s | +1.113s | 35 |
| 18 | Rafael Villagomez | Pinnacle VAR | 1m48.805s | +1.221s | 33 |
| 19 | Joshua Dufek | PHM Racing | 1m48.939s | +1.355s | 37 |
| 20 | Michael Shin | Prema | 1m48.975s | +1.391s | 33 |
| 21 | Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak | Pinnacle VAR | 1m49.252s | +1.668s | 37 |
| 22 | Nikita Bedrin | PHM Racing | 1m49.283s | +1.699s | 30 |
| 23 | Levente Revesz | R-ace GP | 1m49.448s | +1.864s | 36 |
| 24 | Giovanni Maschio | R&B Racing | 1m49.726s | +2.142s | 38 |
| 25 | Niels Koolen | Pinnacle VAR | 1m50.094s | +2.510s | 33 |
| 26 | Daniel Mavlyutov | Hitech GP | 1m50.118s | +2.534s | 36 |
| 27 | Cenyu Han | R&B Racing | 1m50.413s | +2.829s | 42 |
| 28 | Zhongwei Wang | R&B Racing | 1m51.830s | +4.246s | 41 |