Russell tops first day of Estoril GP3 test

ART Grand Prix’s George Russell has topped the timesheets at the end of the first day of the first GP3 test of 2017 at Circuito do Estoril.

The British driver set a lap time of 1m27.606s to go fastest ahead of team-mate Nirei Fukuzumi and Campos driver Raoul Hyman on an ever-improving track after a wet morning. The track dried in the afternoon to allow the grid to use the DRS device on the GP3-16 chassis for the first time in 2017.

Fukuzumi had been in control of the second session of the day before Russell set his fastest lap in the last 60 minutes of the three-hour period, placing just 0.079s behind the leader.

This was a dramatic turnaround for the French team after finishing the opening four hours in the bottom half of the timesheets as four of the slowest six drivers. Russell had been their lead driver in 14^th place after other drivers had quickly set times near the end of the session as the track got drier.

Hyman, whose best time was just 0.099s behind Russell’s overall, previously set the fastest lap of the morning session.

The South African driver put in a late lap on dry tyres, the only driver to do so in the opening three hours, to go into the 1m31s bracket with a time of 1m31.539s and lead Arden’s Niko Kari by a substantial 5.3s.

Another team-mate of Russell, Anthoine Hubert, finished the day in fourth in the timings as the first driver in the 1m28s, with Jenzer Motorsport’s Arjun Maini fifth and Trident’s Giuliano Alesi and Dorian Boccolacci in sixth and seventh.

The final ART driver Jack Aitken completed the day in eighth after being the slowest of its drivers in the morning, with Niko Kari (Arden) and Santino Ferrucci (DAMS) completing the top 10.

There was one red flag throughout the day when Russell’s car came to a halt at Turn 2 after almost an hour of the afternoon session before his day restarted.

The first test concludes with the second and final day in Estoril tomorrow, with the morning session taking place between 9am and 12pm CET. The afternoon session begins at 1pm CET and concludes at 4pm CET.