ART Grand Prix’s championship challenger Alex Albon has gone fastest in the final practice session of the 2016 GP3 Series season in Abu Dhabi.
The British/Thai driver set a time of 1m56.885s, the only driver to reach a time in the 1m56s, to get his weekend off in the best possible way as he looks to overturn a 29-point deficit in the standings to win the title.
Albon (in second in the championship on 173 points) finished directly ahead of his two championship rivals, Trident’s Antonio Fuoco (third, 157 points) and ART teammate Charles Leclerc (first, 202 points), to have early one-upmanship in the emotions of the title battle.
Fuoco set a late time of 1m57.022s to split the two ARTs and lead Leclerc by just 24 thousandths of a second. Albon and Leclerc had spent the majority of the session trading lap times in the top five, unlike the Italian.
DAMS’ Santino Ferrucci was fourth fastest ahead of ART’s other two drivers, Nyck de Vries and Nirei Fukuzumi.
Trident’s Giuliano Alesi finished seventh, with Campos Racing’s Alex Palou, DAMS’ Jake Hughes and Alesi’s teammate Artur Janosz rounding off the top ten. The first ten drivers were separated by just 1.016s.
Sandy Stuvik completed the session as the final Trident driver in the order in 11th ahead of Arden International’s Tatiana Calderon. Koiranen GP’s Matevos Isaakyan and Matt Parry were 13th and 14th, above Arden’s Jack Aitken, who had set sectors similar to Albon throughout practice and looked good for a place in the top ten before pitting at the end of his final two flying laps.
Arjun Maini was the first of the Jenzer Motorsport drivers in 16th, finishing clear of Arden’s Jake Dennis and fellow Jenzer driver Alessio Lorandi. Campos’ Steijn Schothorst, Jenzer’s Akash Nandy, DAMS’ Kevin Joerg, and Campos’ Konstantin Tereschenko were the final four cars on the timing screens.
Tereschenko was last for much of the session, finishing with a lap time 4.9s slower than that of Albon’s.
