Home Formula RegionalFRegional European Championship Stenshorne fastest in big junior single-seater test at Monza

Stenshorne fastest in big junior single-seater test at Monza

by Ida Wood

Photo: Sebastian Rozendaal / Dutch Photo Agency

Teams from multiple series, and categories, took part in a two-day post-season test at Monza this week.

The four-hour session on Thursday morning was open to all cars, and in total 31 drivers set laptimes.

Noah Ping set the pace at first for Arden VRD in a GB3 car, then Martinius Stenshorne went fastest for Campos Racing in a GP3 car.

The next category of machinery to top the times was Fomula Regional, with Ferrari junior Tuukka Taponen setting a 2m011.387s in one of R-ace GP’s cars.

Ping returned GB3 to the top after, then over half an hour later Stenshorne knocked 4.363 seconds off the benchmark time and finished the morning with a 2m04.534s.

That in the end put him 3.786s clear of Ping’s team-mate Nikita Johnson, with Shawn Rashid a further 0.134s behind and then Max Taylor and Ping completing an Arden 2-3-4-5.

Taponen and tem-mate Zachary David were 6.564s and 7.004s off the pace respectively, then Prema’s Rashid Al Dhaheri was the top F4 runner in eighth place. His closest rival was PHM Racing’s James Egozi, who was 0.478s off his 2m14.078s time.

Down in 24th and 29th overall, behind a large group of F4 drivers, were Monolite Racing’s Adam Kovacs and Zhongwei Wang.

The next session was exclusively for F4 cars, and Real Racing Team’s Luca Viisoreanu was fastest at first. No representative laptimes were being set though, with the first to lap at pace being Jenzer Motorsport’s Shimo Zhang.

Later Gustav Jonsson went to the top for US Racing, and was later pipped by team-mate Maxim Rehm to the tune 0.128s. Zhang was third fastest, and Jack Beeton (US Racing) was 1.245s off the pace in fourth. Only 12 of the 24 F4 driver recorded a laptime.

The higher categories shared the track in the next session, and Cian Shields was the pacesetter in one of Campos’s GP3 cars. Davi and Taponen were 1.279s and 1.449s behind respectively, with the Monolite pair the only other drivers setting laps.

The F4 contingent headed back out afterwards and this time all 24 were active. All improvements in the benchmark pace occurred during the opening 10 minutes of the session, with Beeton, Egozi, Kean Nakamura Berta and Al Dhaheri all spending time on top before Zhang set a 2m11.356s that would not be beaten.

Prema’s Freddie Slater got closest, but was 1.425s off the pace. Al Dhaheri was a further 0.069s behind and he had a gap of 0.009s to Beeton in fourth.

Stenshorne led Shields by 2.342s in the day’s final session, with Johnon 6.119s behind in third and David 7.182s back in fourth place.

Friday began with another collective session on a dry and quicker track, with Shields leading Stenshorne by 1.671s. Johnson edged Ping to top spot in GB3 by 0.052s, Kovacs was the fastest FRegional driver by 1.767s over Taponen and Slater beat Beeton by 0.045s to top the F4 classification.

It was a slightly different story in the collective afternoon session, with laptimes getting even faster and Stenshorne setting a 1m41.125s to outpace Shields by 0.704s.

Just 0.145s split Ping and Johnson at the top of the GB3 classificiation, and they were 6.2s slower than the GP3 cars, while a further 1.7s back was Taponen who set the fastest lap for a FRegional car. That group closed up as 0.102s split him and David, with Kovacs a further 0.36s behind.

Egozi ended the test as the fastest F4 driver by setting a 1m52.634s. Beeton was 0.048s slower in second, and Prema’s Dion Gowda was third. A second covered the top 12.

Test results

Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps
GP3
1 Martinius Stenshorne Campos Racing 1m41.125s 108
2 Cian Shields Campos Racing 1m41.829s +0.704s 86
GB3
1 Noah Ping Arden VRD 1m47.330s 106
2 Nikita Johnson Arden VRD 1m47.475s +0.145s 116
3 Shawn Rashid Arden VRD 1m48.047s +0.717s 84
4 Max Taylor Arden VRD 1m50.786s +3.456s 98
FRegional
1 Tuukka Taponen R-ace GP 1m49.029s 154
2 Zachary David R-ace GP 1m49.131s +0.102s 150
3 Adam Kovacs Monolite Racing 1m49.491s +0.462s 116
4 Zhongwei Wang R-ace GP 1m53.619s +4.590s 56
F4
1 James Egozi PHM Racing 1m52.634s 146
2 Jack Beeton US Racing 1m52.682s +0.048s 124
3 Dion Gowda Prema 1m52.885s +0.251s 116
4 Gustav Jonsson US Racing 1m52.942s +0.308s 114
5 Alex Powell Prema 1m53.308s +0.674s 120
6 Kabir Anurag US Racing 1m53.371s +0.737s 104
7 Rashid Al Dhaheri Prema 1m53.407s +0.773s 116
8 Maxim Rehm US Racing 1m53.450s +0.816s 119
9 Tomass Stolcermanis Prema 1m53.469s +0.835s 112
10 Kean Nakamura Berta Prema 1m53.476s +0.842s 113
11 Freddie Slater Prema 1m53.484s +0.850s 111
12 Shimo Zhang Jenzer Motorsport 1m53.519s +0.885s 138
13 Emanuele Olivieri AKM Motorsport 1m53.915s +1.281s 128
14 Andrija Kostic AS Motorsport 1m53.922s +1.288s 120
15 Kamal Mrad PHM Racing 1m54.166s +1.532s 143
16 Newman Chi AKM Motorsport 1m54.328s +1.694s 112
17 Luca Viisoreanu Real Racing Team 1m54.957s +2.323s 151
18 Maximilian Popov PHM Racing 1m54.995s +2.361s 129
19 Eliska Babickova AKM Motorsport 1m55.127s +2.493s 121
20 Francisco Macedo Jenzer Motorsport 1m55.265s +2.631s 130
21 Alexander Savinkov AKM Motorsport 1m55.324s +2.690s 109
22 Riccardo L Cirelli AS Motorsport 1m56.167s +3.533s 110
23 Tereza Babickova AKM Motorsport 1m59.236s +6.602s 44
24 Laura Villars AKM Motorsport 2m00.212s +7.578s 78