Newly-named Lotus ART and Jules Bianchi have finished the fourth and final day GP2 Asia Series testing quickest in Abu Dhabi. Behind the Frenchman, Team AirAsia and iSport International were represented in the top three courtesy of Italy’s Davide Valsecchi and Britain’s Sam Bird.
The final pre-season test day took place today at Yas Marina Circuit on the 4.730-kilometre (2.9-mile) track layout.
Very early in the morning session, Lotus ART’s Esteban Gutiérrez set the pace with 1:36.684 ahead of Carlin’s Max Chilton, but his lap time was soon bettered by the reigning GP2 Champion’s team-mate Bianchi, who clocked in a lap time of 1:36.300.
As the clock ticked down, Bianchi went quicker, so much as to become the only man to go under the 1m36:000 barrier, eight hundredths of a second ahead of Valsecchi while Bird and Marcus Ericsson rounded out the top four.
The afternoon session was a bit slower as teams mainly focused again on completing race simulations. Racing Engineering’s Dani Clos rapidly took control of the timesheet in a 1:36,619, with Johnny Cecotto at Super Nova in tow.
With drivers upping their total of numbers of laps, the order remained unchanged for the first two hours and the session was briefly red flagged twice.
Entering the final hour, Team AirAsia’s Luiz Razia edged Clos off the top. The Brazilian’s team-mate, Valsecchi, soon after moved up to P2 before snatching the top spot from Razia in a 1:36.211 and going even quicker the following lap with a 1:36.159.
Marcus Ericsson moved up to P3 before another red flag occurred. A final interruption happened with ten minutes left into the session when Valsecchi and Romain Grosjean collided. At the restart, iSport’s Sam Bird slipped into P3 in the dying minutes of the day.
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