Slater without rival in practice for Euro 4 finale at Monza

Photo: ACI Sport

Prema’s Freddie Slater had a huge pace advantage in free practice for the Euro 4 season finale at Monza.

The recently crowned Italian Formula 4 champion topped both sessions on a wet, cool track, and was fastest by 0.687 seconds.

He and his team-mates were the drivers to beat through most of FP1, with Tomas Stolcermanis setting the pace at first. US Racing’s Jack Beeton and then Van Amersfoort Racing’s Gustav Jonsson were briefly on top, then Stolcermanis and Slater resumed trading fastest laps.

The pace was brought down from the 2m04s to 2m02s, and Slater’s best effort came on his 10th lap of 12.

He ended the session 0.163s up on Van Amersfoort Racing’s Hiyu Yamakoshi, while Stolceramis was demoted to fourth by team-mate Kean Nakamura Berta. The top four were covered by 0.295s, and Prema’s Alex Powell was 0.61s back in fifth.

The debuting ART Grand Prix team got both of its cars on track, but Bianca Bustamante had all 11 of her laptimes deleted and team-mate Aurelia Nobels was slowest. Prema’s Rashid Al Dhaheri, AKM Motorsport’s Alexander Savinkov and PHM Racing’s Gabriel Gomez were absent from the action, and skipped FP2 as well.

In FP2, Prema was the only team to get its drivers at the top of the times. Nakamura, Slater and Stolceramis disputed first place between each other, and the FP1 benchmarks were beaten just four minutes after the first flying lap was set.

Slater’s 2m02.101s stood as the fastest time for a quarter of an hour before the drivers began their second runs and went even faster. Nakamura and Slater responded to each other’s improving pace until Slater posted a 2m00.081s that nobody else could get near.

Behind Nakamura, Powell and Stolceramis were the only other drivers within a second of Slater’s pace and US’s Gianmarco Pradel was best of the rest in fifth. Yamakoshi was sixth, and R-ace GP’s Luka Sammalisto was seventh.

While there was lots of personal bests set in sector one towards the very end of practice, few of those converted into better laptimes.

Jenzer Motorsport’s Reno Francot and AKM’s Mattia Marchiante were the only drivers who were quicker in the morning session.

Free practice results