Paul Aron led every lap as he claimed his first victory of the season in Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine. The Estonian driver started from pole position after setting the fastest lap in qualifying, and gradually built up a strong lead over teammate Dino Beganovic, who finished second to make it a stunning one-two finish for Prema Racing.
Beganovic, yesterday’s race winner, held off a first lap challenge from Gabriele Minì (ART Grand Prix), who settled for third place. The Italian claimed what could have been his in the first race after he was in contention with the Swedish driver for a podium finish before contact forced him to return to the pits.
Van Amersfoort Racing’s Kas Haverkort was fourth, less than a second away from the podium trio, and 0.487 seconds clear of Michael Belov.
ART Grand Prix’s Mari Boya finished just under five tenths behind MP Motorsport bearer, with Hadrien David taking seventh for R-ace GP.
Sebastian Montoya (Prema Racing) was the fastest rookie as well as scoring eighth position overall with Gabriel Bortoleto (R-ace GP) and Maceo Capietto (Monolite Racing) completing the top-10.
Two safety car periods were needed, the first one due to the contact between Pietro Armanni (Monolite Racing) and Hamda Al Qubaisi (Prema Racing) who both retired. The second one for contact at the same corner (Variante della Roggia) that involved Santiago Ramos (KIC Motorsport) and Keith Donegan (RPM), who will receive a two place grid drop at Imola. The same penalty was imposed to Armanni.
“It was a really good race and overall a really good day for me and the team – said Aron – We were a little bit unlucky yesterday, the pace was there the whole weekend, but we had a broken front wing in qualifying which there is nothing we can do about. So for the first race we started quite far back and I also lost the front wing in the race. So today we knew we had the pace and luckily I was able to show it in qualifying and now in the race. I had a really good start and after that it was quite easy to manage the race with the tyres.”
The field will be back in action again at Imola (May 07-08) for the second round of the year.
Official Standings: https://formularegionaleubyalpine.com/standings/?season=2022