ART Grand Prix driver and Ferrari Driver Academy protege, Charles Leclerc topped the timing sheets in Free Practice for round two of the GP3 Series at the Red Bull Ring. His teammate Nyck de Vries was second fastest with Campos Racing‘s Steijn Schothorst rounding off the top three.
Early on into the session, DAMS‘ rookie Jake Hughes took a little trip into the gravel trap at Turn 3 but was able to keep the car running and return to the pits.
Sandy Stuvik took over at the head of the timings for a while with a 1m20.713s, just one tenth ahead of Koiranen GP‘s Matthew Parry.
A brief red flag was brought out after Giuliano Alesi made contact with the barrier at Turn 1. The Trident Motorsport team have since announced that the Frenchman will not carry on taking part in the weekend due to medical reasons.
When action resumed Antonio Fuoco jumped up into P2, with teammate Artur Janosz leaping up into fourth place to complete a Trident top four. ART’s Alexander Albon soon jumped into P1 but only a matter of seconds later was beaten by Leclerc by half a second.
Dutchman de Vries then improved to second, a tenth behind Leclerc until the Monegasque driver lit up the timing screens once again to go even faster. De Vries was able to respond to his teammate’s pace and lapped a mere 0.041s off Leclerc’s time.
In the dying moments there was plenty of position changes with Schothorst moving to third fastest ahead of Oscar Tunjo and Richard Gonda.
As the checkered flag was shown, Leclerc ended fastest with de Vries second followed by: Schothorst, Tunjo, Gonda, Parry, Nirei Fukuzumi, Akash Nandy, Alex Palou and Santino Ferrucci rounding off the top ten.
GP3 Practice Results – Spielberg
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