Driving for the Lotus team, René Binder paced the Formula V8 3.5 field today in opening practice at the Red Bull Ring circuit.
The Austrian racer led team-mate Roy Nissany by just 84 thousands of a second. After the session though, the Israeli driver had his fastest lap time deleted by the race stewards for having crossed the finishing line with red flags exposed. The interruption led to an early end and was needed to recover the stranded of Pietro Fittipaldi (Fortec Motorsports) who came to a stop in turn two with less than two minutes left on the clock.
Apart from that incident, the session ran smoothly with an ambient temperature of 17°C and an asphalt temperature of 25°C. With Nissany’s demotion to P4, Egor Orudzhev (Arden Motorsport) moved up to second place while Louis Delétraz (Fortec Motorsports) was the best rookie driver in third overall. The top-5 was rounded out by current championship leader Tom Dillmann (AVF).
Renè Binder (Lotus)
“It is really nice to line-up here at Red Bull Ring for my home race. We began the week-end with a first place and I hope we will continue like that”.