Photo: ACI Sport
Prema’s Freddie Slater and Tomass Stolcermanis took the pole positions for this weekend’s Euro 4 races at the Red Bull Ring.
After a wet day of practice, drivers faced a dry (but still cold) track on Saturday morning and many struggled to find the limits as in the first of two 15-minute sessions there were 31 laptimes deleted due to track limits violations.
US Racing duo Akshay Bohra and Maxim Rehm were the benchmark drivers at first, with the latter bringing the pace down to 1m33.351s before Prema’s drivers came to the fore. Stolcermanis set a 1m32.907s, beaten to the tune of 0.05 seconds by Kean Nakamura Berta, then PHM Racing’s Maximilian Popov went 0.007s faster than that before Slater topped the times with a 1m32.583s.
Edu Robinson, new to US’s line-up, impressed to briefly hold first place after Slater, and in the final three minutes there were three more changes to who provisionally held pole. Van Amersfoort Racing’s Hiyu Yamakohi went 0.009s faster than Robinson, Rehm was then 0.097s quicker than him, and finally Slater set a 1m32.116s to take pole by 0.284s.
The same gap covered second to ninth, with Stolcermanis ending the session in third ahead of Robinson, Yamakoshi, Popov, US’s Gianmarco Pradel, Nakamura and Prema’s Rashid Al Dhaheri. Points leader Bohra was only 14th fastest, 0.815s off pole.
Q2 was even colder, and there was a colossal 52 laptimes deleted over track limits abuse. Once again Bohra and Rehm disputed top spot early on, with Robinson joining the pole fight five minutes in. Slater set a 1m33.149s to put Prema on top, but the US drivers were still in contention and Bohra bettered him by 0.12s.
Team-mate Jack Beeton used his slipstream and made a big gain to 1m32.518s, and the next two improvements at the top came from Robinson who lowered the pace to 1m32.105s halfway through the session.
Slater was first into the 1m31s, and went into the final five minutes in second place as Yamakoshi set a 1m31.852s. On his next lap, Slater reclaimed provisional pole with a 1m31.713s and he was still in first when the chequered flag waved. Stolcermanis was still on track, and left it as late as possible to claim his maiden pole position in single-seaters by 0.027s.
VAR’s Gustav Jonsson ended up third fastest, ahead of Yamakoshi, Rehm, Al Dhaheri, Pradel, Beeton and Robinson who were all within 0.42s of pole. The top 21 was covered by 0.955s, and Bohra again struggled in 15th.
Drivers’ second-best laptimes from Q2 set race three’s grid, and Slater secured another pole by tiny margins. A 1m31.761s put him 0.069s ahead of Jonsson, with Stolcermanis a further 0.027s slower in third. Yamakoshi and Pradel were fourth and fifth.
Results round-up
Race 1 grid
1 Freddie Slater Prema 1m32.116s
2 Maxim Rehm US Racing +0.284s
3 Tomass Stolcermanis Prema +0.295s
4 Edu Robinson US Racing +0.353s
5 Hiyu Yamakoshi Van Amersfoort Racing +0.381s
6 Maximilian Popov PHM Racing +0.383s
7 Gianmarco Pradel US Racing +0.390s
8 Kean Nakamura Berta Prema +0.461s
9 Rashid Al Dhaheri Prema +0.511s
10 Luka Sammalisto R-ace GP +0.575s
Race 2 grid
1 Stolcermanis 1m31.686s
2 Slater +0.027s
3 Gustav Jonsson Van Amersfoort Racing +0.141s
4 Yamakoshi +0.166s
5 Rehm +0.214s
6 Al Dhaheri +0.290s
7 Pradel +0.349s
8 Jack Beeton US Racing +0.364s
9 Robinson +0.419s
10 Davide Larini PHM Racing +0.455s
Race 3 grid
1 Slater 1m31.761s
2 Jonsson +0.069s
3 Stolcermanis +0.096s
4 Yamakoshi +0.179s
5 Pradel +0.277s
6 Al Dhaheri +0.330s
7 Rehm +0.337s
8 Beeton +0.345s
9 Alex Powell Prema +0.496s
10 Robinson +0.530s