R-P-M’s Ramos fastest in FREC testing at Mugello

Photo: FRECA

Race Performance Motorsport’s Santiago Ramos set the pace in the pre-event test session for the Formula Regional European Championship at Mugello.

The four-and-a-half hour session started at 9am local time, with the opening hour noticable for Prema’s Rafael Camara only setting five reconnaissance laps before returning to the pits for the rest of the day.

Roman Bilinski led Nikhil Bohra in a Trident one-two after 72 minutes had passed in the session, with the pair split by 0.014 seconds. ART Grand Prix’s Laurens van Hoepen was 0.045s off Bilinki’s 1m44.619s benchmark in third place.

A few minutes later it was a Prema one-two, with Lorenzo Fluxa setting a 1m44.247s to lead Andrea Kimi Antonelli by 0.136s. Bilinski and Bohra improved in third and fourth, and ART GP#’s Charlie Wurz was fifth with a 1m44.455s laptime.

Most drivers were returning to the pits not long after that, but once they returned to track they mostly improved. Monolite Racing’s Kirill Smal jumped up to second place, just a thousandth of a second slower than Fluxa, before heading back to the pits.

After one hour-and-45 minutes of action Fluxa still sat at the top, with Ramos down in 10th but only 0.319s off the pace in a top 19 covered by 0.924s and completed by R-ace GP’s points leader Martinius Stenshorne.

He opted to stay on track, and jumped all the way up to first place with a 1m43.672s. Fluxa was shuffled down to fifth by the two-hour mark as Kas Haverkort, Tim Tramnitz and Joshua Dufek all bettered him too.

There was then very little track activity in the next half-hour, in part due to Monolite’s Giovanni Maschio bringing out red flags, but before the session was stopped Ramos went to the top with a 1m43.554s.

It had restarted with 1h50m still to go, and Antonelli improved to rise into fourth. Van Amersfoort Racing’s Haverkort trimmed Ramos’s advantage down to 0.098s in the fourth hour, but he responded with a 1m43.261s that put him 0.391s clear, with drivers spending most of their time in the pits before another red flag period with 50 minutes to go instigated by Monolite’s Enzo Scionti.

In the brief period before the next red flag stoppage, Stenshorne improved to get within 0.026s of Ramos and Owen Tangavlou jumped from 18th to fifth.

Test results