Nathaniel Powers became the only driver to break the 70-second barrier around Estoril in pre-season testing, putting Downton on top for the fourth time in six days - while behind them the various teams suffered problems, with no fewer than eight red flags interrupting proceedings. The triple World Champion and the British team bolted the extra soft tyres on for the first time this test - along with seven other teams - and Powers duly delivered a 1:09.952, over eight tenths faster than second placed Tumo Kinnumen in the Franklin, also on the extra softs. Allar Kangur was a mere hundredth of a second back from the Finn - albeit with strong form on the soft tyres though his Mathershaw did stop with just under two hours to go - while his team mates brother Jules Simon was fourth on the extra softs for Meteor, half a second behind the Mathershaw driver. Gabriele García was fifth quickest for North Star on the softs - two tenths back from Simon - with Sebastian Bergkvist less than a tenth behind on the extra softs in sixth, but impressively quicker - albeit by just over half a tenth - than his team mates run on the same tyre on day three. Felix Pérez was seventh on the softs for FIRST though he only completed 20 laps before he was sidelined with a clutch problem, the car stopping on track. Nonetheless he managed a time just 1.6 seconds off the pace and only half a second behind what Oleksandr Zozulya managed yesterday. Nikolai Milkovich got his first and only outing during pre-season in the Cheema on the extra softs and was eighth fastest, ahead of the third driver to experience issues - James Thompson in the Phoenix. The Brit completed 30 laps on the extra softs and set a time just over two seconds off the pace, but binned the car at the Esses and touched the barrier, ending Phoenix's test early. Will Hoskins was back in the Andromeda for the final day and rounded out the top ten on the extra softs but with his slowest time on those tyres, though he too managed just 19 laps before he crashed and brought his teams pre-season to an abrupt end. Behind him Finn Schnyder too suffered problems in the AMR - a fuel line becoming disconnected and causing the car to stop on track - and limited the Australian team to just 15 laps overall, but three of those came right before the chequered flag where Schnyder just missed out on beating the teams best time set yesterday. James Vasquez and Hunter Ryan both had clean runs to complete page one of the results, with both drivers a shade over three seconds off the pace, and running on the soft and medium tyres respectively for Ingram and Ocelot. Behind Elroy Wagner completed the most laps of the day for Lopez on the hard tyres with a fastest time of 1:13.100, while Arden Hutchinson in the Lucas was another to crash his car - after just 12 laps - leaving him just fifteenth fastest on the soft tyres. Despite this, he was still some 64 - yes, sixty-four! - seconds quicker than the last placed runner Lewis Ellington in the Excelsior. The new American outfit spent the day plagued with gearbox gremlins and Ellington was subjected to just 17 painfully slow tours of the circuit as the team tried to sort the issues, with the car stopping on track twice.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
|