GP3’s grid of drivers recently returned to their cockpits for the second pre-season test at Barcelona on April 19-20. This was a two-day event, the second of three before the season gets underway at the same circuit on May 12-14.
More time on track gave drivers more opportunities to become acquainted with their Dallara machines and give moments to shine where they were possibly not publicly noticed during the first test at Estoril.
Boccolacci on top of timesheets
Trident’s Dorian Boccolacci set the fastest time of the whole test on the morning of the second day. Every driver used that session to improve their overall times as many focused on setting low times early in the final day.
The Frenchman completed a time of 1m32.896s, only 0.012 seconds faster than the best effort of ART’s Nirei Fukuzumi. Fukuzumi’s team-mates Jack Aitken and George Russell were the only two other drivers to reach the 1m32s marker, finishing 0.019s and 0.048s behind.
This time was 1.736s faster than last year’s pole position lap, set by DAMS’ Jake Hughes, and 0.658s better than 2016’s fastest time in testing at the track, completed by Jenzer’s Oscar Tunjo.
Boccolacci had previously shown glimpses of his abilities, finishing as the second-fastest Trident driver in the first test and with the eighth-best time. These sessions mark the second straight event in which Fukuzumi has finished in second place in the overall timings.
Russell and ART claim most laps
ART also dominated in the top four of the lap charts, with all of its drivers completing more laps than any of its rivals during the two days.
Russell and Fukuzumi both achieved 187 laps, although the British driver completed the most in one day – 57 in the morning of day two.
Anthoine Hubert managed just six fewer laps, with Aitken putting in 174. The next best total from any rival was a tally of 162 from Arden’s Niko Kari.
Due to this lead and the fact that it is one of two teams with four cars, ART set the most laps of any team during the sessions, with a combined total of 729, 25.70% of the 2836 overall laps.
Trident (the other team with four cars) is next best with 547 (19.29%), ahead of Arden (453, 15.97%), DAMS (416, 14.67%), Campos (414, 14.60%) and Jenzer (just two cars – 277, 9.77%).
Boccolacci impresses in intra-Trident battle
When averaging the one fastest lap set in each session, Boccolacci stands out as the only driver to be ahead of his team-mates in every session.
Boccolacci, on average, finished 1.157s ahead of Kevin Joerg, 1.187s ahead of Giuliano Alesi and 1.490s ahead of Ryan Tveter, although these times are slightly skewed because of his pace in the afternoon when the majority of drivers were focusing on long runs.
Fukuzumi was beaten just once by Hubert and Russell in the final session, while Kari placed behind Leonardo Pulcini in the timesheets on the first afternoon.
DAMS’ Santino Ferrucci and Jenzer’s Arjun Maini led their team-mates all but once, being slower than Tatiana Calderon and Alessio Lorandi on the final afternoon.
Raoul Hyman outperformed the other Campos drivers in all but one session, with Marcos Siebert above him in the second session.
The final plans for the 2017 season will be put into place by teams and drivers when the last pre-season test takes place at Valencia on April 25-26.
