Santiago Ramos leads the way in FREC free practice in Hungary

Photo: Ida Wood

Race Performance Motorsport’s Santiago Ramos was fastest in Formula Regional European Championship practice at the Hungaroring.

After sweltering surface temperatures for pre-event testing on Thursday, there was cloud cover on Friday morning that kept the track cool for FP1.

R-P-M was the team to beat, as Adam Fitzgerald was first to set a representative laptime almost 10 minutes into running. His 1m42.189s benchmakrk was beaten a minute later by ART Grand Prix duo Laurens van Hoepen and Charlie Wurz, then G4 Racing’s Michael Belov set a 1m41.489s to go to the top.

Maceo Capietto returned R-P-M to first place by breaking into the 1m40s, and held first place for over a quarter of the 50-minute session before Prema’s Lorenzo Fluxa posted a 1m39.861s.

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Kas Haverkort was next to the top after that, going 0.473s faster, before most of the 34-car field headed to the pits.

Capietto stayed out and eventually closed the gap to Haverkort down to 0.289s, while Trident’s Owen Tangavelou rose to fourth place.

Ramos set the session’s fastest lap with eight minutes left on the clock, going 0.214s clear. Capietto’s next lap reduced Ramos’s advantage slightly to 0.206s, then in the final two minutes there was a flurry of improvements but also lap deletions due to track limits abuse.

That meant the top 10 was constantly changing, at least behind Ramos, and he finished the session with 0.022s in hand over VAR’s Joshua Dufek. Capietto and Haverkort were third and fourth, Prema’s Rafael Camara jumped up to fifth, and Tangavelou and Sami Meguetounif were shuffled down to sixth and seventh.

Martinius Stenshorne was less than a third of a second off the pace in eighth, and 0.991s covered the top 22.

The sun came out for FP2, which raised the track temperature and meant that although drivers were quicker to get on the pace, only five of them bettered their FP1 pace.

Capietto was fastest at first, then Meguetounif. Van Hoepen brought the pace into the 1m41s after 11 minutes, but was quickly shuffled down to fifth before Alex Partyshev brought out red flags.

When action resumed, MP Motorsport’s Victor Bernier and Bilinski broke into the 1m40s. Stenshorne split them with a 1m40.742s effort, and a minute later Belov went third fastest.

There were scarce improvements in the next 10 minutes, before everyone went searching for the limit with eight minutes to go.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli and Esteban Masson went one-two, then Tangavelou was second, only for Bilinski to immediately beat him and then for Bohra to take the position.

A minute later Bernier returned to the top and Haverkort rose to second, and he found more pace to go fastest with three minutes to go. Bernier responded by lapping in the 1m39s, as Dufek rose to third, then Bernier went faster again after the chequered flag to beat his FP1 pace.

Free practice results