Goethe on top as teams focus on long runs in F3 test’s second afternoon

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Campos Racing’s Oliver Goethe was fastest in the afternoon session of the second day of FIA Formula 3 in-season testing at Barcelona, which teams devoted to long runs.

With much warmer Tarmac than in the morning due to the Spanish sun, drivers did not wait long before embarking on race simulations.

The session was halted as the first hour of running was completed as Rodin Motorsport’s Piotr Wisnicki had ran out of fuel an stopped on track. The red flags brought an adrupt end to several drivers’ long runs, meaning they fell short of completing a full race distance by a couple of laps.

The action resumed soon after with MP Motorsport and Campos’s drivers leaving the pitlane for the first time. Both contingents completed eight-lap runs, and they moved to the top of the timesheet. That was followed up with a second run of four laps, and while they improved their laptimes they were far from the benchmark pace set in the morning session when drivers did performance runs on new tyres.

More running took place in the last hour of the day, with most drivers finding more pace in their second long run of the afternoon.

With less than two minutes left on the clock, Goethe rose up to first place by setting a 1m28.213s. That put him ahead of MP’s Tim Tramnitz by 0.062 seconds, with Hitech GP’s Martinius Stenshorne and Luke Browning 0.196s and 0.25s behind repectively in third and fourth.

Campos’s drivers and the PHM Racing trio were the only ones to meet the chequered flag. While Goethe and team-mate Mari Boya in seventh place proved there was pace to be found at the end, the PHM drivers could not improve and filled the bottom three places on the timesheet as they were all more than 4.3s off the pace.

Prema’s Gabriele Mini, who topped the times in both Tuesday sessions, was only 24th fastest and 2.052s slower than Goethe.

Afternoon session results