Maloney fastest on quiet second morning of F2 testing

Photo: Red Bull Content Pool

Rodin Carlin’s Zane Maloney was fastest on the second morning of Formula 2 post-season testing at Yas Marina Circuit.

There were few changes at the top of the times over of the course of the three-hour session, with DAMS’ Juan Manuel Correa leading the way through the first seven minutes by bringing the pace down to 1m37.933s from a starting point of 1m54.143s.

Andrea Kimi Antonelli then went fastest with a 1m37.508s lap, but nine seconds later Prema team-mate Ollie Bearman usurped him by 0.04 seconds. Tucked into Bearman’s slipstream was Maloney, who profited to go fastest by 0.508s.

Three minutes later Antonelli returned to the top by setting a 1m36.607s, and this time he remained there for 17 minutes later. Before he was challenged for first place, there were laps deleted on track limits grounds for Campos Racing’s Pepe Marti, who would later improve to get into the top four, Trident’s Richard Verschoor and DAMS’ Jak Crawford.

Antonelli was knocked off top spot by a 1m36.040s set by MP Motorsport’s Dennis Hauger 28 minutes into the session, and two laps later he improved to 1m35.954s. He did 36 more laps during the morning and was unable to beat that time, but it still secured him third place by the time the chequered flag appeared.

Marti and Correa had laps deleted later in the first hour, and although Correa then did set an improvement that counted he slumped down to 15th place.

Four minutes into the second hour the pace was lowered by 0.171s as Maloney set a 1m35.783s. ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins and Zak O’Sullivan got within 0.105s and 0.21s of him respectively, putting them second and fifth, and Antonelli became the sixth driver to break into the 1m35s with a lap just 0.002s slower than O’Sullivan’s best.

There was no change to the order near the top in the session’s second half, although everyone in the top 11 improved on their day one pace and they were covered by just 0.317s, and there was a scheduled four-minute red flag period with half an hour to go that teams had been informed would occur 74 minutes prior.

Virtuosi Racing’s Gabriel Bortoleto also got a warning with 40 minutes to go to ensure he was doing practice starts “from within the coned box” rather than elsewhere in the pit area.

Martins, Bortoleto, Campos’s Isack Hadjar, Bearman, Trident’s Oliver Goethe and Hitech GP duo Paul Aron and Amaury Cordeel were the only drivers on track when the session ended.

Morning session results