Wharton pips Camara to FREC race one pole at Barcelona by 0.01s

Photo: Dutch Photo Agency

James Wharton pipped Prema team-mate Rafael Camara to pole for the first Formula Regional European Championship race at Barcelona by 0.01 seconds.

Camara ran in Group A as points leader, while Wharton was in Group B which ran later and therefore had a more rubbered in track for their qualifying session.

It was only halfway through Group A’s 15-minute session that the first flying laps came in, and Camara went straight to the top by setting a 1m44.577s. He led Iron Dames’ Doriane Pin by almost a second.

On his next lap he improved to 1m36.509s, a time that Van Amersfoort Racing’s Brando Badoer almost matched. R-ace GP’s Zachary David and ART Grand Prix’s Alessandro Giusti were third and fourth fastest with five minutes remaining, and Trident’s Roman Bilinski rounded out the top five.

Camara set another personal best two laps later, and grew his gap at the top of the timesheet. His 1m35.728s lap put him 0.41s ahead of David, with only Badoer and Trident’s Ruiqi Liu within a second of the new benchmark.

There was still more pace to be found, and Badoer got within 0.157s of Camara with two minutes to go while Liu was shuffled down to ninth as every single driver in the top 14 improved.

Next time by it was a different story, as Camara was rapid through sector one but then failed to beat his previous lap. He had one more attempt, and improved again to 1m35.468s before pitting.

Badoer met the chequered flag 0.286s slower than Camara, David also improved in third and G4 Racing’s Romain Andriolo jumped up to fourth ahead of Giusti, non-improver Bilinki and VAR’s Ivan Domingues. Liu, in ninth, was the last driver within a second of Camara.

R-ace’s Tuukka Taponen set the pace early in Group B, then Wharton and team-mate Ugo Ugochukwu came to the fore with their second flying laps. Taponen remained a contender for pole, and two laps later a 1m35.651s from Wharton put him 0.3s ahead of his R-ace rival, Ugochukwu and Race Performance Motorsport’s Noah Stromsted.

On his final lap Wharton went fastest in all three sectors to improve to 1m35.458s, enough to deny Camara pole by 0.01s.

He was fastest in his group by almost half a second, and behind the top four were VAR’s Pedro Clerot, Sainteloc Racing’s Theophile Nael and Enzo Peugeot, and R-ace’s Enzo Deligny. The quartet all, like Wharton, set personal bests on their last lap.

Qualifying results