Nikola Tsolov started the fourth race weekend of the Formula 2 season with a sixth time in free practice on the street circuit in Monaco, where he won two of his five Formula 3 victories.
At the very end of the 45-minute preparation session in the Principality, the Bulgarian lion turned a lap of 1:22.015 on Pirelli's super soft tires to take sixth position. He was 0.207 seconds behind Gabriele Mini, who led the standings with 1:21.809.
Second, just 0.020 behind the Italian, was Kush Maini, while Alex Dunn completed the top three with a deficit of 0.133. The interesting thing about this is that Mini, Maini and Dunn are teammates at the Alpine academy, and in Formula 2 they compete behind MP Motorsport, ART and Rodin respectively.
During the Monaco practice session, the red flag was shown a total of two times, which slightly limited the time for the drivers to prepare. The first stop came before the first ten minutes had passed, after Oliver Goethe stopped with a breakdown in the second part of the pool complex.
After the middle of the session, Rafael Villagomez crashed while passing the casino, which led to the second red flag. After the session resumed, Sebastian Montoya and Tasanapol Intrapuvashak touched each other in the hairpin, which necessitated the brief appearance of the virtual safety car so that marshals could remove debris from Montoya's car.
The fourth round of the Formula 2 season will continue tomorrow at 16:10 Bulgarian time with qualifying, in which the drivers will traditionally be divided into two groups. After the draw, Tsolov was in the second group, whose 16-minute session is scheduled to begin at 16:34 Bulgarian time.