Deletraz quickest on first day of F2 testing

Alexander Albon was second quickest for the DAMS squad ahead of Norman Nato, who was driving for Racing Engineering.

With the majority of the field concentrating on long runs during the day's first F2 session – the series alternated with GP3 at the Yas Marina track – most of the drivers set their quickest times during the evening slot.

Deletraz – third quickest for MP in the first session – ended up with a best time of the day, a 1m48.282s, which was 0.802s quicker than the fastest time set by McLaren Formula 1 junior Lando Norris earlier on.

Albon wound up 0.045s adrift on his first time out for DAMS, with Nato's best time 0.23s slower than Deletraz.

Haas F1 junior Santino Ferrucci was fourth fastest for the Trident team, where he had closed out the second half of the 2017 F2 season after beginning the year racing for DAMS in GP3.

Nyck de Vries recovered from a morning session where he only completed four laps due to an engine problem, to post the day's fifth fastest time for his 2018 team, Prema Racing.

Norris finished the day in sixth place testing for Campos Racing, the team where he made his competitive F2 debut at the 2017 season finale in Abu Dhabi last weekend.

The McLaren F1 junior will race for the Carlin team in F2 in 2018, but with the British squad taking a sabbatical from the second-tier category this year he has continued to work with Campos.

George Russell – the 2017 GP3 champion for ART Grand Prix – finished the day in seventh place for the French squad, ahead of 2017 Russian Time teammates Luca Ghiotto and Artem Markelov in eighth and ninth – with the former testing for MP today.

Another Haas F1 junior, 2017 Jenzer Motorsport's GP3 race winner Arjun Maini, rounded out the top 10 for Trident.

Jack Aitken, testing at the same venue where he clinched the 2017 GP3 runner-up spot last weekend, was 11th in the other ART car, with DAMS driver Nicholas Latifi separating him from Nirei Fukuzumi (third in 2017 GP3 standings), who was 13th fastest for Arden International.

Day 1 test times:

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	Louis Deletraz	MP Motorsport	1'48.282
2	Alexander Albon	DAMS	1'48.327	0.045
3	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	1'48.512	0.230
4	Santino Ferrucci	Trident	1'48.648	0.366
5	Nyck de Vries	Prema Racing	1'48.700	0.418
6	Lando Norris	Campos Racing	1'48.710	0.428
7	George Russell	ART Grand Prix	1'48.805	0.523
8	Luca Ghiotto	MP Motorsport	1'48.842	0.560
9	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	1'48.848	0.566
10	Arjun Maini	Trident	1'48.889	0.607
11	Jack Aitken	ART Grand Prix	1'49.007	0.725
12	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1'49.204	0.922
13	Nirei Fukuzumi	Arden International	1'49.300	1.018
14	Ralph Boschung	Arden International	1'49.531	1.249
15	Tadasuke Makino	RUSSIAN TIME	1'49.577	1.295
16	Sean Gelael	Prema Racing	1'49.799	1.517
17	Guan Yu Zhou	Rapax	1'49.803	1.521
18	Rene Binder	Rapax	1'50.821	2.539
19	Maximilian Gunther	Racing Engineering	1'51.638	3.356
20	Michael Dorrbecker	Campos Racing	1'52.147	3.865