Norman Nato made it a hat-trick for Racing Engineering as he took the fastest time of the final test day in Jerez. His teammate, Jordan King, had the fastest time on day two giving the Spanish team a clean sweep at the top of the timing board. Nato went quickest in the morning session with a 1:24.518 which was unrivaled by anyone else through the day.
Blue skies again bathed the track in sunlight as the GP2 grid took to the track for the final day of pre-season testing. It was King who hit the track first but the early pace came from DAMS driver Alex Lynn. Twenty minutes into the session, before anyone could forge an attack on pace-setting Lynn, Oliver Rowland pulled out the first red flag of the session after stopping out on track between turns eight and nine.
It was after the restart that Nato set his flying lap that would leave him, once again, top of the timing board. But it was not long before running had to stop once again. A spin from Arden International’s Nabil Jeffri leaving him in the gravel trap at Turn two and a mechanical issue seeing Raffaele Marciello stop at turn eight had the red flags back out on track. Shortly after the session was restarted the third red flag graced the proceedings as Philo Paz Armand spun and stopped at Turn 2.
When the turbulent morning session came to an end, Arthur Pic was 0.08s slower than Nato’s fastest time, with ART driver Matsushita a tenth off the pace. Most of the competitors had used what remained of the session to complete long runs and practice starts. But the fast laps set in the morning session were close, with the first seventeen drivers posting times all within one second. Pierre Gasly, Lynn, Sergey Sirotkin, Antonio Giovinazzi, Nicholas Latifi, King, and Luca Ghiotto finished off the top ten as the grid broke for lunch.
Arthur Pic took the fastest time of the afternoon with a 1:25.583 in his Rapax but was still just over a second slower than Nato’s fastest morning time. His teammate, Gustav Malija, finished the afternoon just behind Pic even though he initially dictated the early session pace. But the red flags had not finished their job for the day as Raffaele Marciello caused the fourth red flag with more mechanical issues on his Russian Time car, stopping between Turns 5 and 6. The final red flag came courtesy of Matsushita.
In the closing stages of the test, he stopped on track at Turn 1. Proceedings were only briefly halted as the car was recovered but this did ruin some of the team’s programs as they were on long runs when the ART stopped. The session ended with Artem Markelov, Marciello, Jimmy Eriksson, Mitch Evans (who had only just missed a top ten finish in the morning session), Marvin Kirchhöfer, Oliver Rowland and Daniël De Jong completing the top ten behind the Rapax pair.
Today’s session concluded the GP2 preseason testing. Next time the cars hit the track will be for the first round of the 2016 season in Barcelona.
