Home Featured Vidales takes Eurocup pole at Imola on single-seater debut

Vidales takes Eurocup pole at Imola on single-seater debut

by Craig Woollard

Photo: Francois Flamand / DPPI

JD Motorsport’s David Vidales took pole position for his first ever single-seater race in the Formula Renault Eurocup at Imola.

The Spanish karting graduate, who was supposed to make his car racing debut in Formula Regional European Championship, was fastest in free practice and was able to replicate that in the 20-minute qualifying session for race one.

ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins initially set the pace in the session, before the track started to rubber in more after being swept clean by rain yesterday.

However, many drivers did not improve on their final laps. One driver who did was Vidales, who was able to overhaul R-ace GP’s points leader Caio Collet in the final moments.

Collet looked as if he could improve a minute on his last attempt, but fell short after a poor final sector.

Martins held onto third, ahead Vidales’ team-mate William Alatalo and Arden duo Alex Quinn and Ugo de Wilde.

There was a brief full course yellow towards the end, as ART’s Gregoire Saucy – who ended up ninth – seemed to have an issue on the run up to Variante Alta. He was narrowly ahead of MP Motorsport’s Franco Colapinto.

During the yellow flag period, FA Racing by Manor’s Amaury Cordeel appeared to overtake someone in an incident that will be investigated after the session.

Late entrant Johnathan Hoggard was slowest of the runners, while MP’s Joey Alders failed to set a lap time despite taking to track multiple times.

 

Qualifying results
Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps
1 David Vidales JD Motorsport 1m40.419s 10
2 Caio Collet R-ace GP 1m40.533s +0.114s 10
3 Victor Martins ART Grand Prix 1m40.558s +0.139s 11
4 William Alatalo JD Motorsport 1m40.669s +0.250s 11
5 Alex Quinn Arden 1m40.693s +0.274s 11
6 Ugo de Wilde Arden 1m40.768s +0.349s 11
7 Paul Aron ART Grand Prix 1m40.867s +0.448s 11
8 Reshad de Gerus Arden 1m40.873s +0.454s 11
9 Gregoire Saucy ART Grand Prix 1m40.943s +0.524s 11
10 Franco Colapinto MP Motorsport 1m41.201s +0.782s 9
11 Lorenzo Colombo Bhaitech 1m41.201s +0.782s 11
12 Petr Ptacek R-ace GP 1m41.259s +0.840s 11
13 Mikhael Belov M2 Competition 1m41.319s +0.900s 11
14 Amaury Cordeel FA Racing by Manor 1m41.372s +0.953s 10
15 Tijmen van der Helm FA Racing by Manor 1m41.540s +1.121s 10
16 Hadrien David MP Motorsport 1m41.547s +1.128s 9
17 Nicola Marinangeli Bhaitech 1m41.866s +1.447s 12
18 Laszlo Toth Bhaitech 1m41.925s +1.506s 11
19 Johnathan Hoggard R-ace GP 1m45.162s +4.743s 8
20 Joey Alders MP Motorsport no time 3