Pre-season tests of the teams participating in the World Series By Renault are being held at the Spanish MotorLand Aragón race track. On Sunday and Monday the teams of the Eurocup Formula Renault 2.0 conducted tests in Alcañiz. During two days of practice sessions best time was set by Alexander Albon (KTR) from Thailand. Second best was Nyck de Vries from Holland and third place was taken by the pilot from Russia Matevos Isaakyan. Two more young Russian drivers were taking part in the tests — Egor Orudzhev, the pilot supported by the SMP Racing programme, rounded out the top ten, while his Tech 1 teammate Vasily Romanov was 23rd out of 33 pilots.
On Wednesday the “sophomores” were replaced by teams from the Formula Renault 3.5 Series. The participation of 13 teams was confirmed for the next season and only Carlin did not arrive at Aragón.
Four Russian drivers take part in the three-day tests — Sergey Sirotkin (Fortec) and Nikolay Martsenko (Comtec), who have already signed contracts for the 2014 season; and also Roman Mavlanov (Zeta) and Daniil Move (Pons). By the way, it was confirmed that Zeta would enter the 2014 competitions under the Russian license. Interesting to know is that the Spanish pilot Roberto Merhi, who has spent the last two years racing in the DTM series, also joined Zeta team at Aragón.
Meanwhile, it was reported that the Danish racing driver Marco Sørensen, who became the test pilot of Lotus F1 team, will drive with Tech 1 in the WSR series. He scored three victories in two previous seasons which allows adding him to the list of front runners for the upcoming championship. The first race of it will be held in Monza, Italy in the middle of April and one of its rounds will be hosted by the Moscow Raceway for the third year in a row on the last week-end of June (28–29).
2014 Formula Renault 3.5 Series teams’ line-up:
Arden: Pierre Gasly and William Buller
AV: to be announced
Carlin: to be announced
Comtec: to be announced
DAMS: Norman Nato and Carlos Sainz, Jr.
Fortec: Oliver Rowland and Sergey Sirotkin
Draco: Pietro Fantin and Luca Ghiotto
ISR: Jazeman Jaafar
Lotus: Matthieu Vaxivière
Pons: to be announced
Strakka: Will Stevens and Matias Laine
Tech 1: Marco Sørensen
Zeta: to be announced
According to www.moscowraceway.ru