Trident seals off Barcelona weekend with top-10 finish
The ninth and penultimate round of the 2024 Formula Regional European Championship by Alpine signed off today at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya. In Saturday’s Race 1, Roman Bilinski managed to achieve his fifth consecutive points finish with a ninth place. On Sunday, the English driver of Polish origins achieved an excellent P3 in group qualifying, securing sixth place on the starting grid.
While he was sailing steadily in the top 10 in Race 2, Bilinski was involved in a contact with a competitor and got the worst of it, damaging his front wing and having to retire. Ruiqi Liu was even less lucky as he was rear-ended in the first corner. The Chinese racer was also left with no other option than to retire. Nicola Lacorte managed to fight back after a complicated qualifying session, recovering five positions to finish in P16. Only one round remains in Monza and will take place in a month on the October 27th weekend.
Roman Bilinski: “After a very good Saturday, with the fifth consecutive top-10 results, today it’s been a day of what could have been. We were just one tenth off pole position, which, to be honest, I thought I could have grabbed myself. Unfortunately, a contact in the race down in Turn 1 meant I couldn’t finish due to damage. We can take a lot of positives from it, we still have round to go to give it everything”.
Nicola Lacorte: “This round didn’t start very well in FP1, with a bit of a technical issue, that forced us to go straight to FP2, which actually wasn’t too bad with a top-10 result. Then we couldn’t keep the same pace in qualifying, which was really tough. After a good start, I couldn’t gain any more places in Race 1. On Sunday it was pretty much the same. After gaining a couple of positions, I couldn’t improve anymore. We are missing some pace in single lap, but the race pace is really good”.
Ruiqi Liu: “Even if the result was not ideal, it’s been a positive weekend from my side, especially on race pace. In Qualifying 1 there was potential here and there. We are missing eight tenths from pole positions, but the gap is not so big from P3. The race was nothing special, we just kept the position as it’s very difficult to overtake here in Barcelona. In Q2 we missed four-tenths to P1, then I made up some positions until unluckily another driver touched me in the rear wing. Not much I could have done, we didn’t show our potential at all”.