Former Red Bull junior Niko Kari was fastest on the opening day of GP3’s post-season test in Abu Dhabi.
Kari, who is testing with MP Motorsport, set a 1m54.960s in the morning session. The team is running the outgoing DAMS team’s cars for the week ahead of a maiden GP3 campaign in 2018.
Alessio Lorandi switches from Jenzer Motorsport to Trident for this test and was second quickest on the opening day, 0.165s adrift of Kari’s benchmark.
Ferrari junior Callum Ilott topped the afternoon session with the third quickest time of the day for ART Grand Prix; a 1m55.277.
He was just 0.003s faster than fellow Ferrari junior Giuliano Alesi. Leonardo Pulcini completes the top five for Campos Racing.
Force India young driver Jehan Daruvala was fourth quickest in both the morning and afternoon sessions but was sixth fastest overall for Arden.
Pedro Piquet was seventh for Trident followed by the ART Grand Prix duo of Nikita Mazepin and Jake Hughes. Gabriel Aubry rounded out the top 10 for MP Motorsport.
Trident regular Ryan Tveter was 11th, with former DAMS driver Tatiana Calderon 12th for ART. David Beckmann, who caused the sole red flag of the morning session when he stopped at Turn 2, was 13th quickest.
Thiago Vivacqua, Juan Manuel Correa, Job van Uitert, Ferdinand Habsburg, Will Palmer, Leonard Hoogenboom and Simo Laaksonen completed Thursday’s runners.
