| Just four days after the last race weekend of the 2017 FIA F2 Championship all the teams took part in three days of testing at the Yas Marina circuit, Abu Dhabi and the Racing Engineering team took the opportunity to run four drivers over the three days. On Thursday it was Norman Nato, the 25-year-old Frenchman who took two wins and five podium positions for Racing Engineering in the 2016 GP2 championship and took an additional win in the F2 Championship for another team this year. In the second car was Maximilian Günther, the 20-year-old German, who has finished second and the third in the FIA European Formula 3 Championship in 2015, 2016 and 2017, taking ten wins and thirty podiums in the three seasons.
For Friday Max continued while Norman was replaced by Oliver Rowland, the 25-year old Englishman who won the 2015 Formula Renault 3.5 Series and who has won two races and taken ten podiums on his way to third in this year’s F2 Championship. Saturday saw 20-year old Brazilian Thiago Vivacqua take over Max’s seat, Thiago has been racing in the EuroFormula Open this season where he took one win and two other podium places.
The first two-and-a-half-hour session on Thursday morning saw the Racing Engineering team reacquainting themselves with Norman and making sure Max was comfortable in the car as he began his first experience of a F2 car and the Pirelli tyres. There was no attempt by either driver to go for a fast lap and at the finish, after twenty laps, Norman was 8th on 1:49.557 with Max 16th after the same number of laps with a time of 1:51.228. In the evening, under the Yas Marina floodlights, Norman improved to 1:48.512 to lie 3rd and Max, who was still learning about F2, was 19th on 1:51.638 after ten laps as technical issues outside the team’s control drastically reduced the number of laps he was able to complete.
Friday saw Oliver taking the place of Norman and, not surprisingly, he was immediately quick finishing the session in 10th on 1:50.875 after twenty-seven laps while Max showed he was getting used to F2 with a time of 1:50.581, an improvement of over one second, after also completing twenty-seven laps to lie 9th. In the evening session Oliver lowered his time to 1:49.344 after another twenty-seven laps for 10th fastest and Max again went faster on 1:49.623 after thirty-four laps for 14th. Once again, the Racing Engineering team was concentrating on running laps to give the drivers time to familiarise themselves with their cars rather than going for any very fast laps.
The final day of testing, Saturday, saw Thiago joining Oliver in the first session and both men concentrated on running laps again without going for a “qualifying” lap. Oliver completed 22 laps, finishing 7th on 1:50.025 and Thiago, who was going well on his first F2 outing, was 14th with a time of 1:51.230 after thirty-two laps. The evening session saw Oliver reduce his time to 1:48.661, just half a second away from the overall fastest time of the three days and Thiago improved his time by almost a second to 1:50.242. The three days of testing went very well for the Racing Engineering team with the four drivers totalling 328 laps, both Norman and Oliver were able to set quick lap times and the team learnt a lot. Max and Thiago adapted well on their first acquaintance with F2 and showed a lot of potential. |
