Tramnitz fastest, David down in 25th in FREC FP2 at Spa

Photo: FRECA

R-ace GP’s Tim Tramnitz was fastest in the Thursday practice session for the Formula Regional European Championship at Spa-Francorchamps.

A pre-event test session and FP1 took place on Wednesday, with Tramnitz and Prema’s Rafael Camara fastest in the respective sessions, then later today is qualifying for race one.

FP2 lasted 50 minutes, and a quarter of an hour into the afternoon session it was ART Grand Prix’s series returnee Hadrien David and Arden’s Joshua Duerksen who jointly led the way having both set 2m16.545s.

They were then shuffled down the order as ART GP’s Laurens van Hoepen went top with a 2m16.148s, Camara slotted into second 0.342 seconds behind and Van Amersfoort Racing’s Kas Haverkort went third fastest.

The top 10 then went unchanged for over 20 minutes before Camara set a 2m15.774s to move ahead. His team-mate Andrea Kimi Antonelli jumped up to second with a laptime 0.176s slower, then two minutes later Race Performance Motorsport’s Santiago Ramos slotted into third with a 2m16.001s while MP Motorsport’s Victor Bernier put himself fifth on the timesheet.

Ahead of the final 10 minutes of action, G4 Racing’s Alessandro Giusti went 0.068s slower than Ramos to slot into fourth while Tramnitz was a further 0.007s back in fifth and the top two improved their pace.

Tramnitz’s next lap laid down a new benchmark for the session, as he set a 2m15.132s to go 0.177s clear of Camara, and a flurry of personal bests being set by other drivers led to lots of change in the top 10 with van Hoepen fourth and MP’s Dilano van’t Hoff fifth.

Duerksen went from 16th to third by setting a 2m15.378s, but only remained there a minute before G4 Racing’s Michael Belov got within 0.169s of Tramnitz’s pace in second place.

Tramnitz responded by breaking into the 2m14s, putting him half a second clear, as his points-leading team-mate Martinius Stenshorne went fifth fastest.

Ramos reduced Tramnitz’s advantage to 0.363s, then ART GP’s Marcus Amand slotted into third 0.018s behind with three-and-a-half minutes remaining. But Amand’s laptime was then deleted for track limits abuse, dropping him all the way down to 29th and four positions behind team-mate David.

That moved Stenshorne up to sixth, and with a minute to go he improved to fifth.

Free practice results