Rain cancels FREC’s first practice at Spa then Wharton tops FP2

Photo: Prema

Prema’s James Wharton was fastest in the single Formula Regional European Championship practice session at Spa-Francorchamps on Friday.

Two sessions had been scheduled, but heavy rain in the morning meant the first was cancelled. Drivers therefore had to wait until the afternoon for their 50 minutes of running,

The first laps were set five minutes in, with ART Grand Prix’s Evan Giltaire laying down a 2m32.545s benchmark, but nobody reached a representative pace until 21 minutes of the session had passed.

Trident’s Roman Bilinski was the first to really set some flying laps, recording a 2m22.600s on his fourth tour of the circuit then improving to 2m20.646s and 2m19.396s on the next two.

He spent six minutes on top before Wharton bettered him by 0.013 seconds, then on his next lap he lowered the pace by over a second as he set a 2m18.323s.

That did not stand as the fastest lap for long either, as two minutes later his team-mate Rafael Camara also made a huge pace gain by posting a 2m17.631s.

There remained a lot of scope for improvement, and next to lead the way was Race Performance Motorsport’s Noah Stromsted. He beat Camara by 0.017s, then Sainteloc Racing’s Theophile Nael knocked 0.494s off the benchmark pace 33s later.

There was still 15 minutes left of the session to go, and there was nine left on the clock when Nael was demoted to second by a 2m16.872s from Van Amersfoort Racing’s Brando Badoer. He spent less than a minute on top, as Bilinski jumped from 21st to first place with a 2m15.725s lap that looked unbeatable.

After a few more laps and no improvements he pitted, while almost everyone else was out in the final two minutes. Wharton went quickest with 71s to go, bettering Bilinski by 0.079s, and Stromsted lapped 0.081s off the new fastest lap as he climbed to third.

Camara and Nael were shuffled down to fourth and fifth, G4 Racing’s Kanato Le was sixth, Badoer ended up seventh ahead of MP Motorsport’s Valerio Rinicella and on his penultimate lap G4’s Jesse Carrasquedo rose from 25th place to ninth.

There were 10 drivers who got within a second of Wharton’s pace, and the top 24 was covered by 1.919s. At the bottom of the timesheet were Trident’s Niko Lacorte and ART GP’s Yaroslav Veselaho, both more than 4.4s off the pace, and the struggling Alex Sawer (KIC Motorsport) and Lena Buhler (ART GP). Buhler was so slow that her pace exceeded 107% of the session’s fastest lap.

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