Mercedes Formula 1 protégé George Russell has beaten Jack Aitken to the fastest time at practice at Jerez as the run-in for the GP3 drivers’ championship begins with the penultimate round.

He set a lap time of 1m30.214s to top the timesheets, 0.073s clear of the Renault academy driver.

Russell starts the weekend 43 points ahead of Aitken and needs to outscore his rival by six points overall by Sunday to win the title outright.

Otherwise, he can better him by five if Aitken does not take another victory this weekend as Russell has won four races compared to his one, and would succeed on countback if level on 48 points with two races remaining at Abu Dhabi.

Anthoine Hubert and Nirei Fukuzumi completed an ART 1-2-3-4.

Red Bull junior Dan Ticktum headed an Arden trio of Leonardo Pulcini, Steijn Schothorst and fellow Red Bull-backed Niko Kari in fifth.

DAMS’ Sauber development racer Tatiana Calderon and team-mate Bruno Baptista completed the top 10 that were separated by just 0.864s.

Haas development driver Arjun Maini was 12th, while Giuliano Alesi – member of the Ferrari academy and son of ex-F1 racer Jean – finished 14th quickest.