ART Grand Prix’s driver Gabriele Minì topped the times in today’s official Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine pre-season test at Paul Ricard. The Italian set the best time during the morning session with a lap time of 1m57.226s that put him 0.365s clear of Michael Belov (MP Motorsport).
Prema Racing‘s Estonian Paul Aron finished third, 0.612s away from Minì and less than a tenth ahead of Gabriel Bortoleto (R-ace GP) in fourth.
Mari Boya (ART Grand Prix) managed to reach the top-five, and finished just 0.057s clear of his teammate Laurens Van Hoepen in sixth.
Sami Meguetounif (MP Motorsport) finished seventh in the combined standings in front of Kas Haverkort (Van Amersfoort Racing) and Joshua Durksen (Arden Motorsport). Trident Motorsport’s Tim Tramnitz rounded-out the top-10.
“We started this morning with a not particularly clean track”, Gabriele Minì said. “We opted for used tires at the beginning of the session. When we changed to a new set we started to run quite well, managing to work on the car in the right way. In the afternoon we focused on the race pace simulation and we are satisfied with it.”
“I’m pretty satisfied with my performance this morning”, Belov added. “In the afternoon I made some mistakes, but definitely I can be happy with how this test is going. Let’s see what will happen tomorrow.”
The field will be back in action on the French circuit tomorrow morning for the second day of testing.
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