Vivien Keszthelyi gets ready to make her Euroformula Open debut in one week's time: the young Motopark driver has successfully completed pre-season testing in Barcelona, setting promising lap times and finishing in the top-10.
The 2021 Euroformula Open season gets ready to kick off next weekend at Portimao, Portugal. One week before the season opener, the teams and drivers had the opportunity to hit the track for a collective test session on Monday and Tuesday at the Montmelo Circuit, Barcelona. Hungarian driver Vivien Keszthelyi was among the 12-driver field in Catalunya, as she is set to make her series debut and will return to F3 machinery after a partial campaign in W Series in 2019.
On the first day, drivers had three sessions available - with the track getting faster in every session. As all sessions saw different drivers alternating at the top of the standings: only Cameron Das (Motopark) managed to set his fastest time of the day in the first morning session.
A red flag came out to stop the action when Filip Kaminiarz (CryptoTower) went off track, damaged his rear wing and stopped.
Motopark's Vivien Keszthelyi secured a top 5 in session two and was within the top 10 in the combined times classify. All 12 drivers were separated by 1.454 seconds at the end of the first day.
"The last time we tested here was last year, on a different path. To be fair, it was quite a bit of a different feeling, because the temperature was also colder and now it's way warmer. But now we really feel ready, also for the potential of the new tyres.
We definitely could learn and get some mileage on the tyres, but obviously it will get worse and worse because the temperature is getting much higher again - so let's see what it comes but we are here to learn and lets see what the next day will bring."
Day two featured four more sessions - with similar results. The fastest lap times were shared by Das, Jak Crawford (Motopark) and Louis Foster (CryptoTower) - with also Casper Stevenson (Van Amersfoort Racing) setting a competitive lap in the second session.
There was another red flag for the stricken car of Kaminiarz again, as the Polish driver stopped on track. He would have another spin later in the day on the final session, with no further damages.
Vivien Keszthelyi had her best session in the late afternoon - again setting a fastest enough lap time for the top ten. The Hungarian 20-year old was P10 in the combined timesheets result for the second day.
With all the 12 announced drivers so far entering the pre-season test in Barcelona, we might expect new drivers joining the series at the season opener.
It will be the second season for the new Dallara Regional F3 chassis, which is also used in the SuperLights Formula in Japan. A new addition the series will also be the three-race format, which was firstly adopted last year in the Monza round and has now been extended to every race meeting with a reverse grid race. Furthermore, there will be additional two points for the driver making up more positions. The series starts on May 2nd in Portimao/Portugal.
Pictures and additional reporting: Xavi Salas