Jin Nakamura pips Pedro Clerot in FREC pre-season test at Misano

Photo: FRECA

Jin Nakamura pipped Pedro Clerot to top spot in Formula Regional European Championship pre-season testing at Misano.

There were four sessions lasting four hours each, and in the first on Thursday it was Van Amersfoort Racing’s Clerot who set the pace. A 1m29.683s put him ahead of ART Grand Prix’s Taito Kato by 0.188 seconds, with Prema’s Freddie Slater in third.

Sainteloc Racing’s Nikita Bedrin was the only other driver within half a second, but a second covered the top 13. There were 15 different drivers who occupied first place at different times in the session, and in addition to early rain there was a red flag period.

A notable entrant in the test was Marta Garcia, who believed her single-seater career was over last October when she concluded a points-free season in FREC with Iron Dames and has raced for the team in sportscars this year.

The pace was lowered in session two, with Kato being the first to beat the session one benchmark just over an hour in. R-ace GP’s Enzo Deligny and Nakamura had been on top prior to that.

Trident’s Matteo De Palo beat Kato’s new benchmark a few minutes later, and with two more improvements brought the pace down to 1m29.216s. In the final half-hour Nakamura bettered it by 0.055s, then with little over two minutes left of the day’s action Trident’s Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi set a 1m29.053s that would prove to be his best lap of the test.

He beat Nakamura by 0.108s, with Slater a further 0.008s behind and De Palo 0.127s off the top. ART GP’s Evan Giltaire was fifth, and VAR’s Dion Gowda and Hiyu Yamakoshi were both 0.212s off the pace in sixth and seventh. Clerot was down in 11th, 0.339s slower than Bhirombhakdi, and the top 20 was split by a second.

Race Performance Motorsport’s Enzo Peugeot caused a red flag period when he stopped on track.

The next morning, Bhirombhakdi’s benchmark was beaten at the halfway point of session three. Kato had set a 1m29.049s, and 25s later Yamakoshi crossed the line in 1m28.922s to take over top spot from him. A 1m28.748s followed from Nakamura one-and-a-half minutes after that.

De Palo and Prema’s Jack Beeton got within 0.127s and 0.153s of Nakamura’s test best, Trident’s Ruiqi Liu and R-ace’s Akshay Bohra made it six drivers in the 1m28s, and there was a gap of just 0.464s down to Peugeot in 17th place.

There was lots of red flag stoppages in session four, and first place was disputed between De Palo and Bhirombhakdi in the opening hour. Bedrin then broke their hold, with Peugeot usurping him 53 minutes later and Bedrin waiting an hour to respond. Clerot improved three times in the final hour and his personal best of 1m28.786s put him second overall in the test.

In-session, he had a 0.466s gap to Bedrin in second place and 0.505s to Peugeot in third. CL Motorsport’s Michael Sauter and Prema’s Garcia were the only other improvers.

Test results