Masson doubles up at Aragon with Eurocup-3 pole and win

Photo: Eurocup-3

Campos Racing’s Esteban Masson made it two wins out of two in the second round of the new Eurocup-3 championship at Motorland Aragon with victory on Sunday.

The day started with the weekend’s second qualifying session, and Masson claimed pole by 0.162 seconds over MP Motorsport’s Bruno del Pino.

Closely matched in third and fourth were Campos pair Francesco Braschi and Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak, but the latter proved unable to start the race.

Del Pino angled his car towards Masson on the grid, rather than directly forward, and unsurprisingly he was jumped at the start by Braschi. Behind them, Javier Sagrera got pushed off track after contact with Suleiman Zanfari.

Masson was without a rival up front and had built a handy lead by lap eight when the safety car was called out.

The cause was Sagrera, who had initially fought with his Palou Motorsport team-mate Miron Pingasov and passed him on lap three at the final hairpin/chicane.

He then started attacking Sebastian Gravlund, who had to get defensive through lap six. They closed in on Zanfari ahead while Nick Gilkes joined their battle from behind, and at the start of lap seven they almost went four-wide down the pit straight.

Gilkes had the inside and passed three cars in one go, then at turn one Gravlund spun around Sagrera while Zanfari got through without trouble. Gravlund’s car was stuck in the turn one run-off straight away, and Sagrera got his car going only to stop later around the lap.

The safety car led the field for two whole laps, and Masson came under pressure when racing resumed. He had a lock-up on the restart lap, then had to defend from Braschi on the next one. Del Pino was right behind them, and he attempted a move around the outside at the final chicane but could not make it work.

He tried again around the outside of turn one, but went off, bringing Jose Garfias and Sebastian Ogaard into the fight and then freeing Masson up front. After 16 laps the winning margin was 3.717s, with Braschi having a one-second penalty due to track limits abuse, and Garfias claimed third as del Pino had five seconds added to his race time for the same offence.

Del Pino dropped to seventh in the final race classification, behind Ogaard, Zanfari and Gilkes, and the final finishers Pingasov and William Karlsson also got track limits penalties but it did not change their positions.

Race result (16 laps)