Photo: ACI Sport
Kean Nakamura Berta and Alex Powell will start from pole in this weekend’s E4 races at Mugello.
First place on the grid goes to Nakamura for races one and two after he topped both qualifying sessions, while Powell earned top spot in race three’s starting order by having the quickest second-best laptime of anyone across Q1 and Q2.
US Racing’s Andrija Kostic set the first flying lap in Q1, then AKM Motorsport’s Ginvera Panzeri went fastest by a massive 2.6 seconds. She was soon beaten by 1.2s as US’s Arjen Kraeling moved ahead, and the pace was lowered a further four times in the next minute.
Kostic returned to provisional pole, then team-mates Ludovico Busso and Gabriel Gomez were on top.
Powell set two new benchmarks, but on his second one he was only ahead for seven seconds before Nakamura came to the fore with an unbeatable 1m48.978s. No other driver lapped sub-1m49s.
Van Amersfoort Racing’s Dante Vinci and Maximilian Popov were third and fourth fastest, points leader Gomez was relegated to ninth and a second covered a top 15 completed by Busso. Kraling was only 29th fastest by the end of Q1.
Panzeri and her team-mates Abdullah Kamel and Evan Michelini were fastest at first in Q2, then US Racing’s lowered the pace to 1m50.191s. That effort was smashed by Powell, who set a 1m38.523s, but even that was not good enough for pole as Nakamura beat him by 0.099s later on.
PHM Racing’s Reno Francot and Prema’s Salim Hanna Hernandez were the only other drivers within 0.5s of pole, and Gomez qualified seventh. Stolcermanis ended up being the top AKM driver in 15th.
Only five drivers failed to improve on their second-best laptimes from Q1, with Popov and Stolcermanis being the highest placed of those overall by qualifying eighth and 11th for race three. Powell clinched pole by 0.115s over Nakamura, and 0.01s split Wheldon and Francot in third and fourth.
Results round-up
Race 1 grid
1 Kean Nakamura Berta Prema 1m48.978s
2 Alex Powell R-ace GP +0.192s
3 Dante Vinci Van Amersfoort Racing +0.224s
4 Maximilian Popov Van Amersfoort Racing +0.260s
5 Reno Francot PHM Racing +0.378s
6 Salim Hanna Hernandez Prema +0.427s
7 Tomass Stolcermanis AKM Motorsport +0.436s
8 Newman Chi Prema +0.560s
9 Gabriel Gomez US Racing +0.579s
10 Sasha Bondarev Prema +0.604s
Race 2 grid
1 Nakamura 1m48.424s
2 Powell +0.099s
3 Francot +0.317s
4 Hanna +0.458s
5 Sebastian Wheldon Prema +0.551s
6 Vinci +0.609s
7 Gomez +0.728s
8 Kabir Anurag US Racing +0.816s
9 Andrija Kostic US Racing +0.828s
10 Popov +0.907s
Race 3 grid
1 Powell 1m38.732s
2 Nakamura +0.115s
3 Wheldon +0.282s
4 Francot +0.292s
5 Hanna +0.366s
6 Vinci +0.399s
7 Gomez +0.462s
8 Popov +0.589s
9 Andrea Dupe Prema +0.664s
10 Kostic +0.795s