Jordan King kept Racing Engineering at the top of the timesheets for the second consecutive day by setting the fastest time in GP2 pre-season testing at Jerez.
The Brit, whose morning session of time of 1m24.449 remained unbeaten for the duration of the day, finished 0.116s ahead of PREMA rookie Antonio Giovinazzi. In the morning, all but one of the 21 drivers went faster than Gustav Malja’s fastest afternoon time.
King, along with teammate Norman Nato – who set the pace on day one – had a more subdued afternoon and finished two places behind the Frenchman in 16th.
The morning session was a largely stop-start affair, punctuated by three red flags and cold conditions restricting the drivers to running the Hard tyre early on.
King set the early pace before ART’s Sergey Sirotkin lowered the benchmark with a 1m25.710.
It took nearly an hour for cars to switch to the Medium tyres and with it came progressively faster times. Giovinazzi prevailed in a battle for mid-morning supremacy as the Italian dipped into the 1m24s. But King was the man to beat and ultimately set the day’s fastest time shortly before the first stoppage.
This was due to a crash of Russian Time’s Raffaele Marciello at turn 14. The Italian, after having only brushed the barrier, was however able to make it back to the pits.
And no sooner had the session resumed that the red flags were shown again: Sirotkin’s car fell victim to the barrier at turn 15. Trident’s Luca Ghiotto’s stoppage on track caused the third halt of the morning.
Warmer conditions in the afternoon session and a focus on longer runs among some of the teams meant times were significantly slower. King and Nato showcased Racing Engineering’s reliability by notching up a total of 129 laps between them; King bagged the most with 72.
Having earlier caused a red flag, Marciello was in the wars again after stopping on track at turn 6. There was no further interference for the remainder of the session however, and Rapax’s Malja ended with the fastest time of 1m26.319.
Behind the Swede was DAMS’ Alex Lynn, a mere 0.021s adrift. Ghiotto did well to muster ninth despite only managing five laps while Giovanazzi capped off an impressive day’s work with third.
The final day of the pre-season test at Circuito de Jerez will take place tomorrow at 09:00 (morning session) with the afternoon session running until 16:00.
Tomorrow Day 3 morning session will start at 09.00, local time. There will be a one-hour lunch break before the afternoon session which will run until 16.00.
