Red Bull junior Liam Lawson turned the screw on the second day of FIA Formula 3 pre-season testing at Bahrain to top the timing screens.
The New Zealander set a time of 1:46:365 late on in the afternoon session as he stretched the legs of his Hitech GP machine.
The 18-year-old was over half a second quicker than his closest challenger which came in the shape of Carlin rookie Clement Novalak.
He, Alex Peroni (Campos) and Logan Sargeant (PREMA) were the only four drivers to complete a lap of the Sakhir International Circuit in under 1m 47s.
Sargeant has set a personal best first sector when a red flag flew with just 90 seconds of the day’s running remaining.
Hitech’s Dennis Hauger rounded off the top five with the third British team’s entry – Max Fewtrell – was 11th.
HWA driver Jake Hughes returned after driving for Mercedes EQ in the Formula e rookie test in Marrakesh and lept straight into the car to finish seventh overall behind Oscar Piastri,
ART duo Théo Pourchaire and Sebastián Fernández were eighth and ninth respectively with day one pace setter Devlin DeFrancesco (Trident) in tenth.
Having topped the morning session, David Schumacher could only manage 25th as the Charouz team focused on long run pace along with MP Motorsport who propped up the leaderboard finishing in the bottom three places.
There is now just one more day of testing before the lights go out in the desert on March 21.
