Max Fewtrell snatches pole position

This morning, Max Fewtrell won his third pole position this season on his final run. A lap of 1:56.535s was good enough to dislodge Yifei Ye, who led for most of the session after he beat the reference time set by Logan Sargeant in the first group on track.

Group A - Group B

Max Fewtrell and Logan Sargeant made it an R-ace GP lockout of row one. Yifei Ye and Lorenzo Colombo (JD Motorsport) were next on row two, followed by Alexander Vartanyan (Arden Motorsport), Victor Martins (R-ace GP), Charles Milesi (R-ace GP) and Thomas Maxwell (JD Motorsport).

Starting grid

Home sweet home

Despite the pressure from Logan Sargeant on lap one, Max Fewtrell held on to the lead ahead of his team mate and a busy field. Row five starters Frank Bird (Tech 1 Racing) and Alex Peroni (MP Motorsport) made contact, provoking the only safety car intervention of the race.

The race resumed at the end of lap four. Max Fewtrell put in an excellent restart to pull out a gap from the rest of the field. In 13th place, the leader in the general classification, Christian Lundgaard (MP Motorsport) took a huge blow today after his incident with Raúl Guzmán (Fortec Motorsports). The Dane was judged to be responsible for the incident and was penalized three grid positions for tomorrow’s race.

Comfortably in the lead, Max Fewtrell strung together lap records to seal the win ahead of Logan Sargeant and Yifei Ye. Lorenzo Colombo didn’t waiver to the pressure from Alexander Vartanyan (Arden Motorsport) to finish fourth.

Next in the order was Victor Martins, Charles Milesi and Thomas Maxwell, who is the only driver to finish in the points in every race so far this season. Richard Verschoor (Josef Kaufmann Racing) was ninth ahead of Neil Verhagen (Tech 1 Racing), who put in a virile overtake on his team mate Alexander Smolyar (Tech 1 Racing) late in the race.

Race 1 (provisional classification*) - Drivers Standings - Teams standings

Quotes

Max Fewtrell (R-ace GP): “A win is always sweeter at home. I like this circuit and it’s been good to me! It would be hard to hope for a better comeback after the Monza weekend where I was run into twice. Today, my reaction at the start was a little slow. I forgot that there were three red lights and not five. I was somewhat comfortable in the race, but there were a few moments in turn 11! I know that it will be harder tomorrow. I will be in the first group on track, in contrast to Logan. He is really on it this weekend, but that won’t stop me from giving it everything I’ve got!”

Logan Sargeant (R-ace GP): “There was never a moment where I could get the advantage from Max such was our pace similar today. It was nevertheless a good day. I was really pleased to dominate my qualifying group and I was able to hold on to second place all throughout the race. Tomorrow morning, the situation will be reversed between me and Max. I hope I can make the most of it to take the pole. If we can put it all together tomorrow, we should be in a good position.”

Yifei Ye (Josef Kaufmann Racing): “We worked hard to find the right set-ups for the race and a better approach in the corners. I led qualifying just until the last minute, but in the end I didn’t get the pole. That’s the way it goes! Towards the mid-way point of the race, I caught up to the leaders, but when I closed up to them, I lost front downforce and grip. I knew I didn’t have much of a chance to overtake them and I decided to hold position and take the points. Tomorrow, we will try to do better with the goal of scoring as many points as possible in the general classification.”

*Results subject to confirmation following technical and sporting verifications.