Wharton doubles up in qualifying for FREC race two

Photo: Dutch Photo Agency

Prema’s James Wharton made it two Formula Regional European Championship poles out of two at Barcelona on Sunday morning.

Running in Group B, Wharton was able to set the pace for the second day in a row and claim his fifth pole of 2024.

It was a rather mundane qualifying session, with drivers finding plenty of clean air on track and only a few finding others doing cool-down laps while they were still on flyers. R-ace GP’s Tuukka Taponen was quickest at first, holding first place with each of his first three laps as he brought the pace down to 1m36.765s.

Wharton beat that benchmark by 0.195 seconds, then half a minute later was demoted to second by Van Amersfoort Racing’s Pedro Clerot. However Clerot was then unable to improve, while Wharton made further gains on each of his final two laps.

He broke into the 1m35s on his penultimate tour, then clinched pole with a 1m35.897s. That put him 0.178s ahead of Clerot, and a last-lap improvement from G4 Racing’s Kanato Le put him third in the group.

Sainteloc Racing’s Enzo Peugeot, Race Performance Motorsport’s Noah Stromsted, Taponen and Sainteloc’s Theophile Nael were all within a tenth of a second of Le, with those close margins proving costly for Taponen. The Finn, who sits second in the standings, only qualified 11th.

Group A also featured some surprises in the order. R-ace’s Zachary David laid down the first benchmark, then Prema’s points leader Rafael Camara, Sainteloc’s Matteo De Palo and G4’s Romain Andriolo.

A truly representative pace was not set until David posted a 1m36.708s, a laptime which only very briefly stood as the fastest before Camara set a 1m36.232s.

Next to the top was ART Grand Prix’s Alessandro Giusti, going quickest by 0.068s. Camara again responded, breaking into the 1m35s, but he then made mistakes on his next two laps and could not improve while Giusti was able to snatch back top spot by 0.038s.

Trident’s Roman Bilinski set a 1m36.103s on his final lap to take third (and therefore sixth on the grid) from VAR’s Brando Badoer, with De Palo 0.2s off the top in fifth.

Qualifying results