Nicholas Latifi took the final chequered flag of the GP2 2016 season with the fastest time on the board. His time of a 1m48.929s was the fastest lap time set during the three-day test.
The morning belonged to Jordan King who’s fastest time was a 1m49.880s. The conditions were cooler this morning than they had been throughout the testing sessions and saw all 21 drivers take to the track on the medium compound tyres.
King, driving the MP Motorsport rather than the Racing Engineering car he has been in all season, was fastest with a 1:50.136 before the first red flag of the day halted proceedings. Sergio Sette Camara clipped the barrier at Turn 19, causing the track action to stop.
Once the track was clear it was Louis Deletraz who found the time on track. It was not enough to beat King’s time as he fell three-tenths short of the Brit’s fastest lap.
Johnny Cecotto, in a Rapax, brought out the second red flag of the day. The car slowed and stopped on track at Turn 20, forcing the grid back into the pits as the Rapax was recovered. It was halfway through the morning session when Cecotto brought the second stop to the day.
King was back in action when the track returned to green and improved on his best lap time. He was the first driver of the day to dip under the 1m50s setting a time of 1m49.880s.
The rest of the morning session was designated to long runs. It was lucky for all those taking part that the session was not interrupted again; this will have given teams and drivers some good data to study over the winter break.
King remained fastest throughout the morning session, with Deletraz and Cecotto completing the top three. Gustav Malja beat Oliver Rowland for fourth on the time sheet, with Artem Markelov and Antonio Fuoco behind them. After his earlier stop in the morning session, Sette Camara was eighth fastest, finishing ahead of Egor Orudzhev and Philo Paz Armand who completed the top ten.
The evening session commenced at night, giving a different dynamic to the test and presenting completely different conditions for the tyres to perform in. It was not long into the evening session that the red flag was back out, this time due to debris on the track.
Sean Gelael took the early pace of the evening session, setting a 1m49.728s. It was not long before he was knocked from the top spot by Markelov who went half a second faster.
An hour of the session had commenced when Rowland set a lap time of 1m49.216s, which placed him at the top of the time sheet. But Latifi, in the sister car to Rowland, took the fastest lap of the session by a tenth, demoting the Brit to second.
It was in the final stages of the session that Latifi managed to find more time on track to set the fastest time of the entire three-day test: a 1:48.929. No one could challenge the Canadian who remained at the top of the time sheet to the chequered flag.
There was one more small delay in the evening session as more debris had to be removed from the track.
When the final chequered flag fell, it was Cecotto who had found time to better Rowland and finish second. King had also improved, leaving Rowland fourth, three positions behind his teammate. Markelov and Fuoco were behind taking fifth and sixth, whilst GP3 Champion Charles Leclerc took seventh in his final test session for GP2. Gelael, Alexander Albon, and Callum Ilott finished off the final top 10 of the year.
