International Draco Racing’s Pietro Fantin was fastest in the opening Formula Renault 3.5 Series collective test session at Silverstone on Friday morning in a session twice interrupted by red flags.
The Brazilian driver set a time of 1m43.056s to set the pace, and was 0.488s quicker than championship contender Matthieu Vaxiviere of the Charouz-run Lotus team.
Nyck de Vries ended the session in third for DAMS, with the McLaren Junior driver just ahead of Tio Ellinas of Strakka Racing, who caused one of the red flag periods when he stopped in sector two.
Dean Stoneman was fifth in the second DAMS entry ahead of current championship leader Oliver Rowland in the Racing Steps Foundation-backed Fortec Motorsports entry, with the Briton 0.002s faster than Arden Motorsport’s Egor Orudzhev.
Roy Nissany and Aurélien Panis were eighth and ninth respectively for Tech 1 Racing, while Beitske Visser completed the top ten for AVF.
The other red flag was caused by Jazeman Jaafar, who stopped on track at turn seven early in the session in his Fortec Motorsports entry.
Will Bratt, racing this weekend for Pons Racing in the seat of Roberto Merhi who is racing in Formula 1 in Italy, was more than eight seconds off the pace in his first single seater session since 2011 in nineteenth, ahead of only Nick Yelloly, who failed to complete a timed lap during the session for Lotus.
Silverstone Collective Test Morning Session Times
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