Photo: Asensi Carricondo / Renault Sport
Red Bull Junior Team’s Carlos Sainz showed impressive speed in the opening session of Wednesday running at Aragon, topping the timesheets and breaking the previous lap record.
The young Spaniard, who is confirmed for a full-time drive with champion squad DAMS, overtook longtime session leader Pierre Gasly for first with thirteen minutes to go and would go on to further improve his benchmark lap.
Sainz’s top effort wound up being two tenths quicker than Oliver Rowland‘s previous record-breaking lap from day one.
Behind the DAMS driver, fellow Red Bull junior Gasly held on to second. The Frenchman stalled the car on-track early in the session but recovered to show frontrunning pace later on. He led the majority of the final hour of running, but couldn’t match Sainz in his last-minute stint.
Draco’s Pietro Fantin continued to show strong testing form in third, ahead of Strakka’s contender Will Stevens and Fortec’s Sergey Sirotkin.
Jazeman Jaafar put ISR’s sole present machine in P6, narrowly ahead of Frenchmen Norman Nato and Matthieu Vaxiviere. Matias Laine and Zoel Amberg completed the top ten.
Session results
| Pos. | Driver | Team | Time | Gap | Laps |
| 1 | Carlos Sainz | DAMS | 1:38.340 | 36 | |
| 2 | Pierre Gasly | Arden Motorsport | 1:38.828 | 0.488 | 29 |
| 3 | Pietro Fantin | International Draco Racing | 1:38.983 | 0.643 | 31 |
| 4 | Will Stevens | Strakka Racing | 1:39.107 | 0.767 | 21 |
| 5 | Sergey Sirotkin | Fortec Motorsports | 1:39.231 | 0.891 | 18 |
| 6 | Jazeman Jaafar | ISR | 1:39.308 | 0.968 | 34 |
| 7 | Norman Nato | DAMS | 1:39.323 | 0.983 | 32 |
| 8 | Matthieu Vaxiviere | Lotus | 1:39.334 | 0.994 | 32 |
| 9 | Matias Laine | Strakka Racing | 1:39.341 | 1.001 | 23 |
| 10 | Zoel Amberg | AVF | 1:39.359 | 1.019 | 35 |
| 11 | Marlon Stockinger | Lotus | 1:39.405 | 1.065 | 26 |
| 12 | Nigel Melker | Tech 1 Racing | 1:39.474 | 1.134 | 34 |
| 13 | Nikolay Martsenko | Comtec Racing | 1:39.488 | 1.148 | 22 |
| 14 | Luca Ghiotto | International Draco Racing | 1:39.657 | 1.317 | 23 |
| 15 | Meindert van Buuren | Pons Racing | 1:40.051 | 1.711 | 34 |
| 16 | Will Buller | Arden Motorsport | 1:40.094 | 1.754 | 26 |
| 17 | Oliver Rowland | Fortec Motorsports | 1:40.451 | 2.111 | 26 |
| 18 | Tom Dillmann | Pons Racing | 1:40.485 | 2.145 | 34 |
| 19 | Marco Sorensen | Tech 1 Racing | 1:40.541 | 2.201 | 17 |
| 20 | Roberto Merhi | Zeta Corse | 1:40.577 | 2.237 | 25 |
| 21 | Beitske Visser | AVF | 1:41.365 | 3.025 | 29 |
| 22 | Liam Venter | Comtec Racing | 1:41.440 | 3.100 | 26 |
| 23 | Roman Mavlanov | Zeta Corse | 1:42.731 | 4.391 | 21 |