Stevenheydens returns to Eurocup-3, Rinicella sets Barcelona test pace

Photo: GRS

Valerio Rinicella topped Eurocup-3’s final in-season test of the year at Barcelona, where 2025’s racing will conclude this weekend.

There are eight changes to the entry list for the season finale, including several notable absentees.

MP Motorsport’s champion Mattia Colnaghi, Palou Motorsport’s James Egozi and Drivex School’s Oscar Wurz are all racing in the Macau Grand Prix this weekend rather than being in Spain, while three-car team Allay Racing will be absent.

Drivex has replaced Wurz with Ricardo Baptista, who made two Spanish Formula 4 outings with the team this year, and Lorenzo Campos takes over Colnaghi’s car. Campos is currently 27th in Spanish F4, where he raced for Monlau Motorsport.

Adam Hideg is becoming the sixth different driver of Drivex’s #17 car this year, and switches allegiance from Palou after coming 19th in Eurocup-3’s winter series with the team.

Global Racing Service is expanding to two cars by bringing back Yani Stevenheydens, who contested the first two rounds, to partner new signing Maximilian Popov. After debuting last time out with USF Pro 2000 runner-up Ariel Elkin at the wheel, Tecnicar Motorsport will run two cars this weekend for Elkin and Daniel Macia. The latter has a wide mix of racing experience, and came fifth in Spanish F4 in 2021.

Testing on Wednesday was split into three sessions, and in the first MP’s Rinicella set a 1m35.627s to comfortably outpace everyone.

There was a 0.534-second gap to team-mate Maciej Gladysz in second, with the same margin splitting second to 10th place.

Campos Racing’s Jules Caranta was third fastest, 0.036s slower than Gladysz, and MP’s Emmo Fittipaldi was fourth. Hideg failed to set any laps.

Rinicella was quickest again in session two, but set a slower pace. This time a 1m36.039s he posted early on put him on top by 0.186s over late improver Gladysz, with Campos’s Ernesto Rivera 0.318s behind in third. The top 15 was covered by 0.868s, with 18 of the 28 drivers failing to improve on their session one times.

Sainteloc Racing’s Lorenzo Castillo and Palou’s Zack Scoular struck trouble in session three that triggered red flags.

Gladysz was the driver to beat through that session, setting a 1m36.391s early on and improving to 1m35.993s after the stoppage. That would go unbeaten, and it meant he trimmed Rinicella’s advantage in the test’s overall classification to 0.366s.

Campos’s Jesse Carrasquedo Jr got within 0.166s of Gladysz with four-and-a-half minutes to go of testing, then improved two laps to be 0.043s off and third overall for the day, with team-mate Kacper Sztuka similarly making two major gains at the very end to sit 0.161s behind Gladysz and demote Caranta to fifth in the combined classification.

Fourth to eighth in session three was split by 0.071s, and included MP’s Andres Cardenas, Campos’s Francisco Macedo and Drivex’s Michael Belov who were among the 13 improvers.

Test results