Estonian Sten Piirimagi Leads the Way at Parnu

After all the preparation was completed under sunny skies on Thursday, Parnu’s auto24ring circuit showed its other side on Friday.

Free Practice 1

FP1 was red flagged twice before it was finally suspended. The heavy rain had picked up a few notches before the start of the first session as the drivers headed out onto a very slippery auto24ring.

Unsurprisingly, championship leader Christian Lundgaard was fastest in FP1 with a lap time of 1:29.386. Russian Nikita Volegov and Dutchman Bent Viscaal were over 1.5 seconds adrift of the Dane, although the conditions meant that the times were not really comparable. After a tough start to the season Guillem Pujeu and Gulhuseyn Abdullayev were P4 and P5.

 

Free Practice 2

The rain eased up just in time before the start of FP2. The drivers tried to find their limits probably a little too enthusiastically, as Viscaal, Lundgaard, Guillem Pujeu and Vladimir Tziortzis all went out. Several drivers followed them taking trips across the run-off areas.

Viscaal getting stuck in the escape road in T1 brought out a red flag on the session, which resumed ten minutes later, for the 19 drivers to end the second Free Practice of the day.

Estonian Sten Dorian Piirimagi set the fastest time of the day, lapping the circuit in 1:24.773. This was a fantastic job by the ALM Motorsport driver who is in his first season in single-seaters. MP Motorsport teammates Viscaal and Lundgaard recovered well after their respective incidents, and finished the session behind the ALM Motorsport driver. Alexander Smolyar seemed to be suffering no after effects just as week after his huge accident in Aragon, and he took P4 in the timesheets. His SMP Racing compatriot Nikita Volegov rounded out the top, just 0.638 seconds slower than Piirimagi.

Sten Piirimägi, ALM Motorsport: “FP1 we did not show our pace due to the numerous red flags, but we knew that it would not be too bad. As for FP2, I managed to find the little grip we had on track and put some laps together. We’ll try to keep it that way tomorrow!”

Action resumes tomorrow at 9:00 with Q1. Races 1 and 2 will follow at 13:20 and 18:45 and they will be streamed live on the series’ Facebook page. Let’s hope for some sunshine to go with it, right?