Home Featured Hitech leads second morning of debut F2 test with Mazepin and Ghiotto

Hitech leads second morning of debut F2 test with Mazepin and Ghiotto

by Peter Allen

Photo: Joe Portlock / LAT Images / FIA F2 Championship

Hitech drivers Nikita Mazepin and Luca Ghiotto topped the times on the second morning of the team’s debut Formula 2 test in Bahrain, with the pair split by just 0.005 seconds.

The session was relatively quiet as team’s concentrated on race runs, with HWA’s Artem Markelov leading for the majority after topping the times inside the first half an hour.

Even though his effort was two seconds off the Sunday benchmark set by Pedro Piquet, it looked as though Markelov would finish the session on top until the late efforts from Hitech.

Ghiotto went 0.052s quicker than his former team-mate Markelov before Mazepin bettered him with a 1m43.825s lap.

Guanyu Zhou got to within 0.096s of Markelov’s time, with Jack Aitken just 0.008s slower than that with his best effort in the closing stages.

Aitken was the last driver within a second of the best time though, with Markelov’s team-mate Giuliano Alesi best of the rest in sixth.

After Tom Dillmann took over his Trident car on Sunday evening, Marino Sato returned to the track and was seventh, followed by Callum Ilott, Felipe Drugovich and Guilherme Samaia.

None of the drivers from Charouz, Prema, ART, DAMS or Carlin troubled the top 10, their quickest laps between three and six seconds off the pace.

 

Morning session results
Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps
1 Nikita Mazepin Hitech Grand Prix 1m43.825s 19
2 Luca Ghiotto Hitech Grand Prix 1m43.830s +0.005s 29
3 Artem Markelov HWA Racelab 1m43.882s +0.057s 23
4 Guanyu Zhou UNI-Virtuosi 1m43.978s +0.153s 31
5 Jack Aitken Campos Racing 1m43.986s +0.161s 36
6 Giuliano Alesi HWA Racelab 1m44.987s +1.162s 32
7 Marino Sato Trident 1m45.251s +1.426s 37
8 Callum Ilott UNI-Virtuosi 1m45.578s +1.753s 29
9 Felipe Drugovich MP Motorsport 1m45.636s +1.811s 29
10 Guilherme Samaia Campos Racing 1m45.867s +2.042s 28
11 Louis Deletraz Charouz Racing System 1m46.997s +3.172s 39
12 Mick Schumacher Prema Racing 1m47.231s +3.406s 38
13 Pedro Piquet Charouz Racing System 1m47.242s +3.417s 41
14 Nobuharu Matsushita MP Motorsport 1m47.573s +3.748s 37
15 Sean Gelael DAMS 1m47.590s +3.765s 43
16 Sergey Sirotkin ART Grand Prix 1m47.601s +3.776s 33
17 Robert Shwartzman Prema Racing 1m48.003s +4.178s 38
18 Dan Ticktum DAMS 1m48.036s +4.211s 37
19 Marcus Armstrong ART Grand Prix 1m48.852s +5.027s 42
20 Yuki Tsunoda Carlin 1m48.857s +5.032s 45
21 Jehan Daruvala Carlin 1m48.938s +5.113s 45
22 Roy Nissany Trident 1m49.207s +5.382s 35