Albon tops test on day 3 in Abu Dhabi

Alex Albon has claimed the fastest lap of the 3 day FIA Formula 2 Championship post-season test at Yas Marina Circuit, topping the 3rd evening session with a lap of 1:48.110 halfway through to top the session ahead of Norman Nato and Nyck De Vries, while earlier in the morning session Arjun Maini was P1 with a time of 1:49.040, holding off rivals Norman Nato and Antonio Fuoco to the flag.

Sunny but windy conditions greeted the field this morning when the session got underway, with Maini grabbing the first competitive laptime after just 7 minutes before being briefly disposed from the top spot by Oliver Rowland and Guanyu Zhou, but the Indian reclaimed the top spot with 2 quick laps around the 40 minute mark.

There was little more to note from the session as the drivers simply pounded out the laps, working on race simulations, although Nato and Fuoco closed the gap to the Indian with 45 minutes remaining of a session that saw little in the way of off-track action.

The evening session saw the teams use the last of their tyres to good effect: the first half of the session was fast and frenetic, with Nicholas Latifi making the early running before Albon, Nato, De Vries and Louis Delétraz shared P1 between them, being briefly delayed by a red flag for Leonardo Pulcini’s impact at turn 3.

At the halfway mark Albon finally grabbed the position for himself, setting the top time of the test in the process, and with their tyres spent the remainder of the session was reasonably quiet. The final test session of 2017 is now concluded: the first test of the 2018 FIA Formula 2 Championship will run from March 6-8 at Le Castellet, France.