Photo: ACI Sport
Prema’s Freddie Slater set the pace in Formula Regional European Championship pre-event testing at Imola on Firday, which marked the paddock return of Kacper Sztuka.
The teenaged Pole is driving for G4 Racing, and will be replacing Arthur Aegerter in its line-up. He previously drove for the team in the season opener, and his main programme this year has been the FRegional-based Eurocup-3 with Campos Racing.
He is fourth in the standings there with one win and four other podiums from the season’s first half.
Also returning to the FREC grid this weekend is PHM Racing-supported Akcel GP team, which missed the previous round at Paul Ricard two weeks ago.
The first test session at Imola did not reach its planned run time of nearly two hours due to four red flag periods, but during the green flag action there were still 11 different drivers who topped the times.
Race Performance Motorsport’s Ean Eyckmans posted the first representative laptime of the day, a 1n42.560s, with Trident’s Ruiqi Liu and Matteo De Palo lowering the pace in the minutes after he set that.
De Palo was first into the 1m41s, then Prema’s Rashid Al Dhaheri usurped him with two 1m41.7s laps. Slater beat him by 0.034s, then Van Amersfoort Racing’s Dion Gowda lowered the pace twice marginally before a red flag stoppage.
His 1m41.593s was eventually beaten, but only just, by his team-mates. Hiyu Yamakoshi went quickest by 0.028s, then Pedro Clerot was a further 0.033s quicker.
Al Dhaheri was in his slipstream and set a 1m40.843s, then with an hour to go R-ace GP’s Akshay Bohra recorded a 1m40.704s that would not be beaten.
The VAR trio were the fastest drivers at first in session two, then ART Grand Prix’s Evan Giltaire broke into the 1m41s. He was edged by team-mate Kanato Le and Slater in the next minute, then ART GP’s Taito Kato moved ahead.
Sainteloc Racing’s Nikita Bedrin was first into the 1m40s, but the battle for first place was soon between Slater and Giltaire again. The latter brought the pace down to 1m40.309s before Clerot set three new benchmarks, then team-mate Jin Nakamura went fastest by 0.025s.
Over 70 minutes remained, but fewer drivers improved after that. One driver who was able to set personal bests on later runs was Slater, who improved upon the test’s fastest lap three times to end the day with a 0.399s advantage over Clerot and 0.454s to Al Dhaheri.
Test results
| Pos | Driver | Team | Time | Gap |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Freddie Slater | Prema | 1m39.309s | 50 |
| 2 | Pedro Clerot | Van Amersfoort Racing | +0.399s | 65 |
| 3 | Rashid Al Dhaheri | Prema | +0.454s | 51 |
| 4 | Dion Gowda | Van Amersfoort Racing | +0.600s | 56 |
| 5 | Jin Nakamura | R-ace GP | +0.641s | 58 |
| 6 | Akshay Bohra | R-ace GP | +0.646s | 58 |
| 7 | Nikita Bedrin | Sainteloc Racing | +0.653s | 60 |
| 8 | Hiyu Yamakoshi | Van Amersfoort Racing | +0.766s | 66 |
| 9 | Matteo De Palo | Trident | +0.856s | 66 |
| 10 | Enzo Deligny | R-ace GP | +0.858s | 56 |
| 11 | Jack Beeton | Prema | +0.934s | 54 |
| 12 | Ean Eyckmans | R-P-M | +0.982s | 73 |
| 13 | Evan Giltaire | ART Grand Prix | +0.990s | 66 |
| 14 | Taito Kato | ART Grand Prix | +0.992s | 64 |
| 15 | Ruiqi Liu | Trident | +1.138s | 71 |
| 16 | Tim Gerhards | Sainteloc Racing | +1.144s | 64 |
| 17 | Nandhavud Bhirombhakdi | Trident | +1.205s | 60 |
| 18 | Kanato Le | ART Grand Prix | +1.299s | 64 |
| 19 | Michael Belov | CL Motorsport | +1.333s | 57 |
| 20 | Enzo Yeh | R-P-M | +1.376s | 64 |
| 21 | Kacper Sztuka | G4 Racing | +1.505s | 53 |
| 22 | Edu Robinson | G4 Racing | +1.566s | 51 |
| 23 | Zachary David | CL Motorsport | +1.570s | 57 |
| 24 | Saqer Al Maosherji | Akcel GP | +1.729s | 62 |
| 25 | Javier Sagrera | Akcel GP | +1.799s | 59 |
| 26 | Yaroslav Veselaho | Sainteloc Racing | +1.894s | 62 |
| 27 | Aditya Kulkarni | Akcel GP | +2.543s | 63 |
| 28 | Edouard Borgna | G4 Racing | +2.765s | 47 |
| 29 | Giovanni Maschio | R-P-M | +2.859s | 22 |