PREMA takes podium finish in up-and-down Barcelona weekend

It has been an up-and-down weekend for PREMA Powerteam in the second round of the Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine at Barcelona. Sharing Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya with Formula One this weekend, the team couldn't maximise qualifying, and that led to a troubled run in the races, with Paul Aron salvaging a podium finish in race 1 and P4 in race 2. The Estonian really made the most out of his package, fighting with an extremely solid approach.

Racing for the first time at the Spanish venue, Swedish rookie Dino Beganovic continued his learning experience and eventually rounded out the top-10 of race 2 after contact had brought him down in the first.

Spaniard David Vidales had a massively difficult weekend at his home racetrack.  Struggling with grip and traffic, Vidales had to settle for P19 in Q1 and fell victim to contact while going for a bold recovery in race 1. Q2 did go better indeed for him with P10. In race 2 though he was forced off the track to avoid two crashing cars and had to come back to the pits with rear damage. 

Paul Aron: "Quite a tricky second round in Barcelona. We struggled a bit with pace, but we still managed to pull out the maximum from the weekend with a third and a fourth. I would say that we score good points, and we are still P2 in the championship. Sadly, Saucy is a bit away now, but we still have eight rounds to go, and Monaco is a track where the driver can make a big difference. We still have time. I'm sure I have the pace to go back at him. We'll see at Monaco."

David Vidales: "A disappointing weekend. We struggled a bit with the pace in a weekend where you don't have a lot of time of practice, and most of the practice ran under full course yellow. That's where the problem started: we arrived in qualy lacking a bit of pace and with no time to change or improve anything, plus we had to deal with massive traffic. Both races ended with incidents, but that's a consequence of not having a good position at the start. We have to focus on that for the next race. Although it was not a good weekend, we have a lot of things to analyze and we know where we have to work on. That's what we are going to do for Monaco. We need to prepare and be ready for the coming races."

Dino Beganovic: "It has been a difficult weekend here in Barcelona. Qualifying was not too bad in Q1 with P6 and Q2 with P11 which was not quite expected. In the first race we were missing a bit of pace, not finding the right balance and we ended up race 2 in P10. We will analyze the situation to get stronger in Monaco."