Clerot claims maiden FREC pole on home soil for VAR at wet Zandvoort

Photo: ACI Sport

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Pedro Clerot took a last-gasp pole in the mixed conditions of qualifying for the first Formula Regional European Championship race at Zandvoort.

On home soil for his team, Clerot pipped Prema’s Freddie Slater by 0.015 seconds on a drying surface in the faster second group by just 0.015 seconds.

R-ace GP’s Akshay Bohra will line up alongside Clerot on the front row having topped the times in the wetter conditions faced by the first group.

VAR’s Hiyu Yamakoshi set the early pace in group A, a 1m41.772s putting him 1.268s clear of ART Grand Prix’s Kanato Le. Yamakoshi was going faster still but aborted his lap to pit for slick tyres as a dry line began to emerge.

Bohra showed the potential of that compound as he jumped to second, then Trident’s points leader Matteo De Palo beat him. Both were half a second off Yamakoshi though.

Laptimes tumble in the final four minutes as the drying process continued, and De Palo went fastest. That was short-lived as R-ace’s Enzo Deligny went 0.751s quicker than him with a 1m40.561s.

The top places were continually changing, with Bohra and Deligny lowering the pace each time they crossed the line.

Deligny looked to have secured top spot as Yamakoshi fell 0.380s short on his final lap, but Bohra improved in second two and sector three to piece together a 1m37.391s lap that earned him first place by 0.069s.

De Palo set a personal best in sector one on his final lap and he demoted to fourth (and therefore eighth on the grid) after the chequered flag waved.

Group B was greeted by a drier track but rain began to fall almost immediately, with the session suspended when Sainteloc Racing’s Nikita Bedrin came to a stop before anyone had set any representative laptimes.

The session resumed with just over 10 minutes remaining and Slater’s first flying lap, a 1m34.756s, ensured that pole would go to his group.

He was intially 0.15s clear of R-ace’s Jin Nakamura, and then both he and Clerot were improving when the session was halted again as Race Performance Motorsport’s Giovanni Maschio lost the rear into the banked Hugenholtzbocht corner.

Everyone dashed back out for the final minutes but conditions remained tricky, catching out R-P-M’s Enzo Yeh at Tarzan although he managed to get out of the gravel to avoid a third stoppage.

Slater went fastest in the third sector, but his lap as a whole was half a second off what had been previously achieved.

On his final lap, Slater did lower the pace but as first to take the chequered flag it was drivers behind who got drier conditions. ART GP’s Evan Giltaire moved up to third, and Clerot grabbed pole position by 0.015s.

Giltaire’s team-mate Taito Kato secured fourth in the group ahead of Nakamura and Sainteloc’s Dutch driver Tim Gerhards.

Qualifying results