Teo Martin’s Samaia tops EF Open free practice at Paul Ricard

Teo Martin Motorsport’s Guilherme Samaia led the way in free practice for Euroformula Open’s Paul Ricard season opener.

The Brazilian leapt to the top of the timesheets at the very end of Friday’s second session – going almost half a second quicker than Motopark driver Liam Lawson, who had topped the pre-event test on his first day in a EF Open car.

Carlin’s Christian Hahn was able to beat Red Bull junior Lawson’s time with his session-topping FP3 lap, despite missing the Thursday test through illness.

Samaia’s team-mate Lukas Dunner was fourth fastest, ahead of Japanese Motopark duo Yuki Tsunoda and Marino Sato.

Fortec Motorsport driver Cameron Das beat Carlin’s Teppei Natori to seventh by 0.005s, with Linus Lundqvist (Double R Racing) and Aldo Festante (Teo Martin) completing the top 10, which was covered by 0.874s.

Due to heavy overnight rain, the track was still wet when the first session of the day took place, and only five drivers ventured on to the track to set competitive laps. Drivex School’s Rui Andrade was the best of these, ahead of Hahn and the RP Motorsport trio of Artem Petrov, Javier Gonzalez and Pierre-Louis Chovet.

Andrade and the RP Motorsport drivers slid down the order as the day went on though, and ended up only ahead of the debuting Dimitrios Tsimpris.

Free Practice results