Trident’s Raffaele Marciello topped a heavily interrupted first day of the post-season tests at Abu Dhabi.
The Italian finished the day fastest with a time of 1m48.937, beating the DAMS duo of Oliver Rowland and Nicholas Latifi.
Morning pacesetter Nobuharu Matsushita had set the second fastest lap in the afternoon, but had his times stripped after his ART car was found to be underweight.
Racing Engineering’s Jordan King ended the day fourth quickest, ahead of newly-signed 2017 Prema driver Charles Leclerc in fifth.
Matsushita led Marciello in the early running, with each dipping into the 1m49s as the track began to rubber in.
Salvatore De Plano began his GP2 testing debut for MP Motorsport by spinning and stopping at turn 20, which put a halt to proceedings towards the end of the first hour in the morning. The 42 year-old driver spun again later in the session, but was able to carry on.
Several other GP2 debutants were on track during the opening day’s action. Formula Renault V8 sparring partners Louis Deletraz (Racing Engineering) and Egor Orudzhev (Campos) ended up 11th and 16th respectively while GP3 vice-champion Alexander Albon (ART) completed the morning session in 18th.
The afternoon session began in similar conditions to the morning, with hit track temperatures and blue skies. Again it was Matsushita who set the early pace, but Leclerc was once more putting in rapid times and was a mere 0.1s adrift of the Japanese after half an hour.
His Prema team-mate Antonio Fuoco however had a difficult afternoon. Having out-paced Leclerc in the morning, the Italian caused a fourth red flag of the day after stopping on track. His session did not get much better as a collision with Felix Seralles’ Carlin brought about another stoppage. He ended the day 15th fastest.
DAMS showed well in both sessions with Rowland and Latifi behind the steering wheels. The pair were 6th and 9th in the morning but hooked up consistent laptimes in the cooler evening conditions to finish 2nd and 3rd, with Rowland just 0.2s shy of Marciello.
Artem Markelov stopped his car on track in the final minutes, which meant that no more lap times could be set and the session was ended prematurely.
The field return to testing in Abu Dhabi tomorrow morning for the second day at 11:45am local time (GMT+4).
