MP’s Colnaghi leads Eurocup-3 practice as Drivex revises line-up for Spa

Photo: MP Motorsport

Mattia Colnaghi led MP Motorsport team-mate Valerio Rinicella by 0.339 seconds in free practice at Spa-Francorchamps on Thursday.

There were two pre-event test sessions earlier in the day, and it was another MP one-two in the first but with Kai Daryanani leading Alexander Abkhazava. Daryanani set a 2m24.457s on a wet track to lead his team-mate by 0.215 seconds, and Drivex School’s Christopher Feghali was 1.193s off the pace in third.

Feghali and Jorge Garciarce are new additions to Drivex’s line-up for this week’s round, replacing Alessandro Famularo and Preston Lambert respectively. Famularo has decided to go to the Red Bull Ring this weekend to step up to Euroformula with BVM Racing, taking over the car that Lambert took to a podium finish last time out in July as a debutant.

Three weeks after that, Lambert had a crash in Eurocup-3’s most recent race at Assen and broke his right hand. That has not only ruled him out of this weekend’s round, but also the following one at Jerez on September 19-21. Drivex has already confirmed Garciarce will be in its line-up the rest of the season.

Lambert and Famularo are currently 25th and 27th in the Eurocup-3 standings, while Garciarce came 14th in USF Pro 2000 this year and Feghali is currently 13th in Spanish Formula 4. Earlier this year he was 10th in its winter championship.

It was dry by the time Eurocup-3’s second test session at Spa began this afternoon, and the pace was lowered to 2m13.382s by MP’s Maciej Gladysz. He had a 0.181s advantage over Campos Racing’s Ernesto Rivera, with Colnaghi 0.454s behind in third and team-mates Andres Cardenas and Emmo Fittipaldi completing a top five covered by 0.6s.

A further six Campos and MP drivers were within a second of the pace, with Sainteloc Racing’s Garrett Berry best of the rest in 12th.

He was fastest at first in practice, and traded top spot early on with Campos’s Enzo Tarnvanichkul, Fittipaldi and Palou Motorsport’s James Egozi.

Rinicella was first into the 2m14s, and was swiftly bettered by Fittipaldi. Gladysz and Rivera made small improvements to the benchmark laptime, then Rivera made further gains later on that brought him into the 2m13s.

Campos’s Jules Caranta set a 2m13.271s to beat him by 0.561s, but he only spent 10s in first place before Rinicella went quickest by 0.169s.

Rinicella went slower on his final lap, while Colnaghi and Rivera improved. Colnaghi set a 2m12.763s to comfortably go fastest, and Rivera got within 0.042s of Rinicella’s previous benchmark.

Free practice results