Aron bounces back to win, Beganovic keeps series lead despite penalty
PREMA Racing experienced another highly-successful Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine weekend at Circuit Paul Ricard. In round 4, the Italian squad brought home a win and two podium finishes courtesy of stalwarts Paul Aron and Dino Beganovic.
Coming from an extremely difficult weekend at Monte Carlo, the 18-year-old Estonian bounced back in style by winning a superb Race 1 battle after fighting with his team-mate. Aron, who got win number two, also regained steam in the driver championship.
Beganovic kept steaming ahead since first call at the French venue by taking pole position for race 1 and proceeding to finish second. Unfortunately he was deprived of another second-place finish after race 2, when he was disqualified for an alleged technical infringement.
The tightening torque of a hub flange of his car was found to be lower than reported on the car's technical manual. Beganovic, who gained no performance advantage whatsoever from the issue, still leads the series by a comfortable margin. Moreover, the team decided to appeal the decision, as the measurement, which the team accepts, regards a matter included in the car's technical manual and not in the technical rulebook.
Sebastian Montoya finished close to the overall top-10 twice and battled for the rookie honours. The Colombian-American came close to victory, and eventually settled for P2 and P3 respectively.
Hamda Al Qubaisi, who also did not experience an easy weekend at Monte Carlo, got a great break, improving her lap time consistently and fighting with some highly-competitive rivals along the way.
PREMA now waits for the next event of 2022 which will be at Zandvoort, The Netherlands, in two weeks.
#3 - Paul Aron
"I think overall we can be quite happy with the weekend. Obviously it was a disaster in Monaco, so it has been great to be back, winning the race on Saturday and scoring good points on Sunday. I still feel we have more potential, and we didn't really maximise what we had on Sunday. We will work hard to find a little bit more, but we can be quite satisfied. It was a good redemption after Monaco."
#18 - Dino Beganovic
"It was a strong weekend again with a double P2 and a pole position for race 1. I'm very happy with the points we scored, especially because we didn't expect this from Paul Ricard. This track has been a bit of a weak point for us in the past, so I'm delighted with the outcome even though we were fighting for wins. Overall, we got a great deal of points for the championship, and we can be happy with the step we have done. We have to keep working like this, and we'll see in Zandvoort."
#58 - Sebastian Montoya
"It was a difficult weekend. I think we had really good potential, but it was just so difficult to put it all together. This track has always been quite challenging, and coming in, I was trying to do the best we could. I had the speed, and the team had it quite good, it was just about putting it all together with the car and my driving. We have showed our potential in the past, but in qualifying the pace was not optimal. However, the race pace was quite positive, so if we were able to qualify a little further ahead we could have easily stayed with the top group. It's something to work on for the next race. Head down, and full push."
#88 - Hamda Al Qubaisi
"So far I think this has been a very good weekend in general. I worked with the team to improve throughout the whole event, and I think I’ve done very good steps especially in qualifying. I’m happy with the improvements, and I want to give a big thank you to the team for the support as always!"