Freca

Bilinski conquers first row at Monza for Trident

Bilinski conquers first row at Monza for Trident

Bad weather has conditioned the first day of the weekend in Monza, which hosts the last round of the season of the 2024 Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine.

After heavy rain fell throughout Thursday’s collective test and first free practice session, a respite allowed the championship contenders to run on dry tires in free practice 2, which saw Trident part of the fight for the best lap time. Roman Bilinski set the second-best time overall, while Ruiqi Liu and Nicola Lacorte were fifth and sixth respectively.

Qualifying 1 was supposed to take place on Saturday morning. Still, after just two minutes the session was interrupted due to poor visibility, caused by the huge amount of water present on the track from overnight rainfalls. The race direction thus decided to use the ranking of free practice 2 to draw up the starting grid for race 1. For Trident, this meant that Bilinski would start from the front row, while Liu and Lacorte would sit in fifth and sixth place.

In the race, Bilinski fought for a long time to maintain a podium finish but suffered a slight decline towards the end, dropping to seventh place. Nicola Lacorte remained in the top 10 until he spun at the braking point of the first chicane and was unable to restart. Ruiqi Liu was instead involved in multiple accidents, which put him out of action.