Rivera denies Rinicella pole for Eurocup-3 race one at Monza by 0.015s

Photo: Red Bull

Campos Racing’s Ernesto Rivera claimed pole in a dramatic qualifying session for Eurocup-3’s first race at Monza.

There are two changes to the grid this weekend, with Wiktor Dobrzanski returning to Drivex School’s line-up after contesting the season opener with the team while Allay Racing expands to three cars to incorporate Owen Tangavelou.

Last time out at Paul Ricard, Tangavelou drove the car Dobrzanski is now in. He made his Eurocup-3 return, after coming fourth in the championship last year, by withdrawing from USF Pro 2000’s round at Road America where he was due to race.

Despite failing to make the top 10 in a race on his comeback, the Franco-Vietnamese is already up to 19th in the Eurocup-3 standings while he has dropped to 17th in USFP2000. He is missing this weekend’s round in Mid-Ohio to be at Monza.

The track action began in Italy with two pre-event test sessions on Friday. A third of the field set their personal best laptimes in session one, including Rivera who set the pace with a 1m46.271s. He led team-mate Enzo Tarnvanichkul by 0.14 seconds, with Kacper Sztuka and Francisco Macedo completing a Campos 1-2-3-4 0.3s behind.

Sztuka and Macedo also failed to improve in session two, dropping to sixth and seventh overall as MP Motorsport’s Valerio Rinicella lowered the pace to 1m46.205s. Tarnvanichkul was second again, 0.112s behind Rinicella and 0.01s ahead of team-mate Jules Caranta. Rivera was fourth, another 0.02s slower, but second overall, and there was a 0.369s gap to MP’s Alexander Abkhazava in fifth. In the combined classification, a second covered the top 15.

Rain hit the track on Saturday morning, leading to free practice being delayed by a few hours. There were then yellow flag interruptions thoughout the session, and it always looked like an MP driver would end the morning as fastest.

Colnaghi set two laps good enough to be quickest, and the 1m57.719s set with his final effort put him a huge 0.833s ahead of Rinicella. Maciej Gladysz was 0.043s off Rinicella, and Andres Cardenas completing a MP lockout of the top four but was a second off the pace.

Rivera was best of the rest in fifth, 1.131s slower than Colnaghi, and Palou Motorsport’s was sixth.

Qualifying was also delayed by almost an hour-and-a-half due to rain, but by the time the 20-minute session began the track was declared dry.

The majority of the field headed out straight away, but then went straight back in after guaging how dry the track truly was.

Allay Racing’s drivers decided to complete a full lap, and the Hellberg drivers put laptimes on the board five minutes in along with Palou’s Alceu Feldmann Neto.

He moved to the top with his second lap, a 1m49.934s, as the rest of the field headed back out.

Feldmann was knocked down to being slowest (in eighth place) eight minutes in as Rivera lowered the pace to 1m46.993s to go fastest by 1.268s over Sztuka.

As the second half of qualifying began, all but one driver had now completed a lap and Rivera had a 1.154s gap to Gladysz.

Colnaghi went fastest with a 1m46.384s a minute later, leading Tarnvanichkul by 0.282s and Caranta by 0.336s. Egozi also beat Rivera, and Campos’s Jesse Carrasquedo Jr did too with his first lap a minute after that.

Egozi briefly occupied top with seven minutes to go, then Gladysz crossed the line in 1m46.262s to beat him by 0.097s. Tarnvanichkul was just 0.005s slower, and Rivera improved in seventh.

Red flags waved with five-and-a-half minutes left on the clock, and the stoppage lasted eight minutes. There was a queue to leave the pits when the track went green again, but they only got up to pace when the chequered flag waved.

Cardenas briefly held second, then Rinicella claimed provisional pole before Rivera set a 1m45.611s to deny him by 0.015s. Gladysz improved to 1m46.084s in third, ahead of Colnaghi and Cardenas.

Points leader Sztuka was only 11th, and Carrasquedo ended qualifying in 12th.

Qualifying results