James Wharton dominates FREC race one at Barcelona

Photo: Dutch Photo Agency

Prema’s James Wharton dominated the first Formula Regional European Championship race of the weekend at Barcelona, while Tuukka Taponen finished ahead of Rafael Camara to keep his title hopes alive.

Camara is now 58 points ahead of Taponen in the standings, which means he could still give up seven points to his rival and be crowned champion in race two with one round to spare.

Wharton led away from pole position thanks to a good getaway, after two extra formation laps took place as a consequence of ART Grand Prix’s Yaroslav Veselaho stopping on track. Conversely, his team-mate Camara endured a slow start from second on the grid dropping him behind R-ace GP’s Taponen.

Taponen’s team-mate Zachary David couldn’t get going immediately from sixth place as the lights went out and dropped to 22nd. Luckily, the drivers behind him managed to avoid him as he got up to speed.

The safety car was deployed at the end of the first lap to clear the Van Amersfoort Racing car of Pedro Clerot. The Brazilian and Race Performance Motorsport’s Noah Stromsted made contact going into turn one, with the former sustaining terminal damage to his front-right suspension.

Prema’s Ugo Ugochukwu attempted a move on Sainteloc Racing’s Theophile Nael at the restart and the pair touched at the apex. Nael on the outside took the run-off holding on to sixth position, which he had gained benefitting from starting on the left-hand side of the grid, while Ugochukwu pitted at the end of the lap and then retired one lap later.

Wharton soon broke away at the front, while the other top five runners remained within one second of each other. Camara pressured Taponen within half-a-second distance, but he was unable to find the way past his fellow Ferrari Driver Academy member.

The Australian commanded the race to the end, building a gap of up to seven seconds as he took his third victory of the season.

There were no changes of position after the safety car, with VAR’s Brando Badoer taking the chequered flag in fourth place followed by Stromsted. Nael came home in sixth ahead of his Sainteloc team-mate Enzo Peugeot, who enjoyed a strong opening lap to make up places from 13th on the grid. ART GP’s Alessandro Giusti, Trident’s Roman Bilinski and VAR’s Ivan Domingues rounded off the top 10.

Race result (16 laps)