Racing Engineering’s Norman Nato retained first place on the leaderboard as GP2 testing at the Jerez circuit concluded on Thursday.
The Frenchman, who also set the pace on Wednesday, put in a 1:24.518 in the morning session. The time proved to be unbeatable and he the day quickest, just ahead of countryman Arthur Pic.
ART Grand Prix’s Nobuharu Matsushita was third fastest, with Pierre Gasly and Alex Lynn, driving for Prema and DAMS, completing the top five. All those taking part in Thursday’s running set their best times in the morning.
Sergey Sirotkin, Antonio Giovinazzi, Nicholas Latifi, Jordan King and Luca Ghiotto rounded out the top 10. Next up was Rapax driver Gustav Malja and Mitch Evans, who races for Campos this year.
Oliver Rowland, Daniel de Jong, Raffaele Marciello and Artem Markelov were 13th, 14th, 15th and 16th respectively. Marvin Kirchhofer, Philo Paz Armand, Jimmy Eriksson, Sean Gelael and Nabil Jeffri completed the results.
It was a heavily disrupted day, with Rowland, Jeffri, Armand, Marciello and Matsushita all causing red flags for off-track excursions and reliability issues.
Carlin used just one car at the Jerez test, while Status Grand Prix were absent. Thursday’s running brought an end to pre-season running, with the cars next hitting the track in Barcelona for the first round.
