The second GP2 Series pre-season test got underway on Tuesday at the Jerez circuit in Spain, with Racing Engineering's Norman Nato heading the field come the end of the first day.
Alex Lynn headed out first for DAMS, closely followed by team-mate Nicholas Latifi and the rest of the 21-strong pack for initial installation laps. The track then fell silent for some time as a blanket of fog rolled in, but quickly cleared, allowing for the first timed laps of the day.
Russian Time’s Raffaele Marciello set the early pace with a laptime of 1:26.762 but was beaten by Racing Engineering’s Jordan King, who went quickest with a 1:26.201 in the closing minutes. But a raft of improvements came, with Nato finding an extra few tenths to dip under 1m26s and sit pretty at the top of the timesheets come lunch.
Nato headed Pierre Gasly by 0.1s with King third. Lynn, Antonio Giovinazzi, Mitch Evans, Sergey Sirotkin, Arthur Pic, Oliver Rowland and Gustav Malja completed the top ten.
Temperatures improved for the afternoon session which saw PREMA Racing's Pierre Gasly finish up quickest, although he remained five-tenths down on Nato's best lap from the morning session.
Before an hoour of the afternoon session had passed, Arden International’s Jimmy Eriksson caused a red flag after he clipped the barrier at Turn 1.
There were little time improvements throughout the session as most focussed on completing long runs and practice starts.
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