Taponen tops pre-event test day for FRegional Middle East round two

Photo: FRME

R-ace GP’s Tuukka Taponen was fastest in pre-event testing for round two of the Formula Regional Middle East season at Yas Marina Circuit.

The paddock switched from the Corkscrew layout used last weekend in round one to the longer Grand Prix layout for two test sessions on Thursday.

Sainteloc Racing’s Theophile Nael topped the timesheet in session one with a 1m50.284s laptime. He had a big gap to second place until late on, but even then only three drivers got within half a second of his pace.

Taponen lapped 0.087 seconds slower than Nael towards the end of his run, with Mumbai Falcons’ James Wharton getting within 0.395s of Nael on his penultimate lap. His team-mate Ugo Ugochukwu went fourth fastest, 0.445s behind. Despite the gaps at the top, the top 18 were covered by 0.956s.

In total there were 62 laptimes by 21 drivers deleted due to track limits abuse, with Pinnacle Motorsport’s Alexander Abkhazava and Finley Green having nine and seven laps deleted respectively.

Abkhazava started session two on top with his first two laps, only for the second of those to be deleted as he went beyond track limits at turn 16. R-ace GP’s Martinius Stenshorne was next to occupy first place, stting a 1m51.264s, then Evans GP’s John Bennett lowered the pace by 0.174s.

Taponen and Bennett were first into the 1m50s, then both were beaten by Evans GP’s Costa Toparis as he improved his pace three times and also went faster than Nael’s session one benchmark.

To regain top spot, Taponen set the first sub-1m50s lap with 42 minutes of the hour-long session still to go. That would be enough to keep him on top until the end.

MP Motorsport’s Valerio Rinicella rose to third place on the timesheet with 26 minutes remaining, and six minutes later red flags were waved as Xcel Motorsport’s Yaroslav Veselaho struck trouble. After a nine-minute stoppage, action resumed but but nobody in the top five improved.

Nael set a 1m50.465s to climb to sixth, but since he had gone faster in session one he ended the day in third overall. Wharton ended the session in 21st place, also not improving on his session one pace and therefore sinking to ninth in the combined timesheet. Six other drivers set their personal bests in session one.

This time there were 72 deleted laptimes, with 23 of the 29 drivers guilty of track limits offences. Abkhazava was again the worst offender with 11 deleted laps, and PHM Racing’s Taylor Barnard has seven deletions.

At the bottom of the timesheet in both sessions was Mumbai Falcons’ Rafael Camara, who set only 15 laps in total and was 8.233s off the pace.

Test results