Doohan tops the times again on second afternoon of F2’s Barcelona test

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Virtuosi Racing’s Jack Doohan ended day two of Formula 2’s in-season testing in Barcelona on top, after causing a red flag stoppage in Thursday’s afternoon session.

The track was dry for the whole session after the morning showers, encouraging drivers to get in more running ahead of a forecasted rainy last day of testing tomorrow.

Hitech GP’s Jak Crawford caused the first red flag stoppage of the afternoon 40 minutes in, halting other drivers’ race simulations on the hard compound tyre. The Red Bull junior lost control of his car at turn nine and spun into the outside barrier.

The track went green again and long runs resumed on both the hard and soft compounds.

Doohan caused the second stoppage after spinning at the exit of turn seven halfway through the three-hour session.

Towards the end of the second hour, Trident’s Roman Stanek replaced Campos Racing’s Ralph Boschung on top of the times as teams switched their focus to performance runs and several drivers improved their laptimes.

Rodin Carlin’s Enzo Fittipaldi set a fastest lap of 1m25.072s with over half an hour remaining on the clock. Prema’s Frederik Vesti was next to go fastest, bettering Fittipaldi by 0.221 seconds.

Theo Pourchaire lowered the benchmark to 1m24.565s before Vesti went back out on track to go one tenth of a second faster than the ART Grand Prix driver.

A last effort from Doohan with less than five minutes left on the clock meant the Alpine junior ended on top for a second day in a row. However, the Australian went 0.141s slower than he did on Wednesday.

Prema’s Ollie Bearman stopped on track once the chequered flag had fallen and had to be towed to the pitlane by a service vehicle, and after that MP Motorsport’s Jehan Daruvala and Hitech’s Isack Hadjar both stalled on the grid as the field practiced standing starts once the session had ended.

Afternoon session results