Verschoor fastest on final day of Bahrain F2 test

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Richard Verschoor set the fastest time on a relatively quiet final day of Formula 2 in-season testing in Bahrain.

Four drivers – Jak Crawford of DAMS, Trident’s Max Esterson, and the Rodin Motorsport duo of Alex Dunne and Amaury Cordeel – were blocked from participating in the final day of the test as part of the punishment for the illegal drilling their teams were found to have carried out on their cars to collect data during pre-season testing.

As on the previous days, teams generally dedicated the morning session to race runs. John Bennett set the fastest time, 0.271 seconds ahead of his Van Amersfoort Racing team-mate Rafael Villagomez, but his 1m47.228s lap was nearly five seconds adrift of the pace seen on Thursday evening. The AIX Racing pair of Cian Shields and Joshua Duerksen followed.

Duerksen went immediately quicker at the start of the afternoon session under floodlights, but was displaced from top spot by Hitech’s Dino Beganovic just prior to the half-hour mark.

After a brief red flag to retrieve the car of Oliver Goethe, Duerksen reclaimed first place as the half-way point approach when he went more than two seconds quicker than Beganovic.

He was still clear by that gap when Richard Verschoor knocked him off top spot just before the session entered its final half-hour with what would the MP Motorsport driver’s final lap of the test.

Verschoor’s 1m43.273s would end up as the best time of the final day, with relatively few other drivers attempting flying laps in the closing stages. Gabriele Mini’s time of 1m42.488s from Thursday evening was the fastest of the three-day test.

Sami Meguetounif took third for Trident, while Verschoor’s team-mate Goethe was able to return to the track late on and go fourth. Cian Shields in fifth was the last driver to lap within 2s of Verschoor’s time. The times of Bennett and Villagomez in the morning remained good enough for eighth and ninth overall across the final day.

Leonardo Fornaroli was the busiest driver of the day, completing 92 laps with his best almost five seconds off the pace.

Combined day three times