Russian driver Konstantin Tereschenko led the way during the first of the two collective test sessions around the Circuito de Jerez, but it was Pietro Fittipaldi who set the best time of the day in the second session.
Tereschenko hit the front late in the opening session with fresh Michelin rubber after a red flag to recover the stranded car of Giuseppe Cipriani from the gravel trap, with the Teo Martin Motorsport driver setting a best time of 1:28.299s.
Alfonso Celis Jr was second fastest for Fortec Motorsports ahead of his team-mate Diego Menchaca, while RP Motorsport duo Yu Kanamaru and Roy Nissany rounded out the top five ahead of Egor Orudzhev.
“My session went on pretty good overall and when we put new tyres on in the last two minutes I posted a good lap so we got a virtual pole position for this session,” said Tereschenko on worldseriesv8.com.
“I think we can keep the speed and we hope to continue the same way for the rest of the weekend.”
Fittipaldi recovered from failing to set a time during the opening session to hit the front in the afternoons running, the Lotus driver setting a time of 1:27.905s ahead of team-mate and championship leader Rene Binder. The Brazilian had practiced starts during the opening session, something that has been plaguing him in recent races, but he was more than four-tenths clear of his team-mate.
Menchaca was again third, setting a time identical to the thousandth of a second to that of Binder, while Matevos Isaakyan was the best placed of the SMP Racing by AVF drivers in fourth ahead of Nissany and Kanamaru.
“We had issues with the starts recently so in the first Collective Test we didn’t even post a lap because we were doing starts and then coming back to the pits,” said Fittipaldi.
“I was able to do about 10 starts and I’m happy to say we found a solution. We kept practicing starts in the second session and I only did two runs. I completed three push laps on fresh tyres and then two push laps on new tyres but still ended up P1 and it was really good.”
Konstantin Tereshenko used new Michelin tyres to his advantage to top the first session – Credit: Klaas Norg / Dutch Photo Agency
Circuito de Jerez Collective Test 1 Result
[table id=2022 /]
Circuito de Jerez Collective Test 2 Result
[table id=2023 /]
