Pourchaire dominates last morning of F2’s in-season Barcelona test

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Theo Pourchaire dominated the timesheet on the last morning of Formula 2’s in-season test at Barcelona, helped by a new set of soft tyres.

The first red flag of the morning was out just two minutes into the session. Pourchaire spun and stalled while warming up his tyres just after leaving the pitlane.

When the action resumed, both he and ART Grand Prix team-mate Victor Martins went out on track on a used set of soft tyres. Pourchaire set a fastest lap of 1m24.852s, with Martins sitting in second place 0.491 seconds behind.

Campos Racing’s Ralph Boschung brought caused a second red flag period 40 minutes into the session as he ran off-the-track in sector two.

The track went green again after a 10-minute stoppage, and the ART GP pair went for a second performance run, this time on new tyres. Pourchaire improved his previous benchmark by almost one second, setting a 1m23.943s, the first sub-1m24s lap so far across the three days of testing.

Meanwhile, other drivers performing qualifying simulations did so on old sets, due to having already used all the three sets of the softest compound available in the previous days. Consequently, they were unable to break the 1m25s barrier.

Rain forecast for the afternoon session prompted drivers to clock a large amount of laps in the first hour-and-a-half of running. Rodin Carlin, Prema and Virtuosi Racing focused on long runs on the hard tyre, whereas the rest of the teams alternated between race and qualifying simulations.

Several drivers had surpassed the 50-lap mark at the end of the session, with Virtuosi Racing’s team-mates Jack Doohan and Amaury Cordeel completing 69 and 68 laps respectively.

Morning session results