GP2 & GP3 Abu Dhabi test: Latifi and Fuoco quickest on Day 2

Canadian Nicholas Latifi and Italian Antonio Fuoco were fastest overall on second day of official post-season testing for GP2 and GP3 drivers. Latifi was quickest in DAMS GP2 car, while Fuoco set fastest lap-time in both morning and afternoon session with Trident’s GP3 car.

Latifi topped the classification on second day with laptime 1.47.860, set in the final stages of the evening session. Norman Nato (ART Grand Prix) and Sergey Sirotkin (Rapax) completed the top three. Twenty four cars took place in a test on Pirelli Medium tyres. Some familiar faces from Day 1 returned to the field whilst some drivers switched teams. Artem Markelov (Russian Time) was fastest in GP2 morning session, ahead Latifi and Nato.

Morning session was halted twice, first time to collect some debris at Turn 1 and second time after Mitch Evans (Campos Racing) stopped on the track. The track went live again but was quickly red flagged for a third time after Pierre Gasly (Russian Time) stopped at the exit of Turn 7. In the evening session there was just one red flag period after Felix Rosenqvist (Prema Racing) made contact with the barrier and marshals had to repair it.

Trident tester and Ferrari Academy Driver Antonio Fuoco was quickest overall among GP3 drivers. His best laptime 1.55.135 was 0.058s faster than Arden International’s Jake Dennis in the morning session. Jack Aitken (Arden) posted the fastest time of the afternoon session and with laptime 1.55.164 he was second overall on Day 2.

There were several new faces to the driver line-up for day two of testing: Nyck De Vries and Alex Albon came in at ART Grand Prix, along with Rahul Raj Mayer joining Campos Racing. There was an early red flag after Mayer spun at Turn 4. There was a second stoppage in proceedings after Jenzer Motorsport’s Antoni Ptak made contact with the Tech-Pro barrier at Turn 19. Third interruption followed after Campos Racing’s Konstantin Tereshchenko stopped at Turn 9.

At the chequered flag, Fuoco finished on top ahead of Jake Dennis and Charles Leclerc, the Monegasque driver who was fastest on Day 1 and switched to Arden from ART GP for Day 2. In the afternoon session there was a short red flag period when Schothorst stopped at Turn 7. After Jack Aitken set the fastest lap Will Palmer (Status Grand Prix) made contact with the barrier and thus the session was red flagged and not re-started with less than five minutes remaining on the clock.

Photos: gp2series.com, gp3series.com