Lawson Tops Day 2 of F2 Testing in Bahrain

Liam Lawson proved to be the fastest driver on track on day 2 of FIA Formula 2 pre-season testing after becoming the first driver to set a time below the 1:42.000 threshold for his new team, Carlin. Lawson’s best effort came in the afternoon session where teams opted to run some qualifying simulations thanks to the warmer conditions out on track.

The quickest time in the morning came from the Estonian driver Jüri Vips with a 1:46.705 as opposed to the Kiwi’s 1:41.623 in the afternoon. Ralph Boschung and Theo Pourchaire finished the day on identical lap times of 1:42.096, with them setting twenty and twenty-five laps, respectively.

Logan Sargeant was half a second off his Carlin team-mate after twenty-six laps, showing good signs of control of the F2 chassis following his graduation from FIA Formula 3. Fellow F3 graduate and last years runner-up Jack Doohan set the fifth fastest time, three hundredths faster than his Virtuosi Racing team-mate Marino Sato who set a 1:42.174.

Frederik Vesti set an identical time to Sato down to the thousandth in seventh place with Felipe Drugovich, Jehan Daruvala and Richard Verschoor rounding out the top ten. The whole grid were separated by two seconds in the afternoon session, with the only outlier being Marcus Armstrong who set just two laps before clipping the barriers at turn eight and turning in a 1:57.854.

Cem Bölükbasi spent the most time out on track with thirty-four laps of the Bahrain International Circuit, setting the fifteenth fastest time of the grid. He enjoyed his run-out after yesterday’s afternoon session was cut short due to technical issues.

The Turkish debutant stated the following in a press release, “Very positive day overall, we did both race runs and quali simulations and we gathered a lot of informations. I’ve learned a lot of things that can help us improve especially in the long runs, the car already feels amazing and we just keep making steps forward, we’ll keep doing so tomorrow.“

Credit: Formula 2

F2 testing returns on Friday for the final test before the start of the new season in two weeks time. Everyone is getting to grips with the car, including the ten rookies that are stepping up from F3 for their first full-time season in F2.