Noel Leon quickest before bringing out red flag in final Macau practice session

Rain continues to obscure indications of FIA FR World Cup order as drivers seek precious track time

While track conditions were certainly improved compared to yesterday’s first qualifying session, it was still far from ideal for the young drivers in the FIA FR World Cup as they attempted to gather as much experience and data ahead of this afternoon’s second qualifying.

It was a similar case of the fastest times being set early on as rain started to fall mid-way through the 40-minutes of practice. The first foray of laps were sighters, then with just over ten minutes gone some quicker times from Tuukka Taponen and Ugo Ugochukwu vaulted them up the order for R-ace GP.

Taponen, having just gone fastest, then overcooked it and ended up in the run-off before Police, making a stylish ‘stop and go’ in the narrow escape road and rolling back in reverse onto the circuit to continue. Simultaneously there was another car blocking the exit at the super-slow Melco hairpin, and the #88 of Kai Daryanani was also stopped on the side of the track.

With the red flag being the only option to neutralise the track with multiple stopped cars in different locations, thankfully no recovery was needed as all of them managed to restart and return to the pits. It was KCMG IXO by Pinnacle’s Noel Leon who had just popped in the fastest time before the red flag, and it was a time that would stand at the top of the timesheet as conditions started to deteriorate.

Then session resumed with 24 minutes left on the clock, but with rain still hanging around in the air almost all the drivers were soon back out to try and maximise their track experience. It wasn’t long, though, before car #88 stopped again at the Solitude Esses, and with spray on the start/finish straight getting worse, seemingly with localised heavier spots, the red flags again flew around the Guia Circuit.

Despite getting some more laps in before the clock ran out, times wouldn’t improve after this stoppage, and behind Leon it was Théophile Naël for Sainteloc Racing and Kanato Le for ART Grand Prix in the top spots.

Dino Beganovic’s tricky return to Macau continued as he affected a repeat of Taponen’s trip down the escape road, just avoiding the barriers at Police corner and going into the runoff. He would fail to put a time on the board during the session and has it all to do when the stopwatch comes out for qualifying later today.

The session would come to an end under red flag, as the driver in P1, Noel Leon, put his car into the barriers at Solitude Esses with only a couple of minutes left to run.

This afternoon’s all-important qualifying session will set the grid for tomorrow’s Qualification Race, combining times with yesterday’s Qualifying 1. The rest of this weekend’s FIA FR World Cup action will be streaming live on the FIA YouTube channel.