Armstrong ends pre-season test on top

The only FIA Formula 2 pre-season test ended with New Zealander Marcus Armstrong topping the timing screens on a day which saw 17 of the 22 cars within a second.

Armstrong has made the move to DAMS following a disappointing 2020 with ART and now seems settled in his new surroundings with the best time of the final day.

The Kiwi has been kept on by Ferrari for another year as a junior driver and fellow F1 juniors were snapping at his heels with Red Bull and Hitech GP duo Liam Lawson and Juri Vips second and third in the morning.

Alpine and UNI-Virtuosi’s Guanyu Zhou was fourth quickest with the quartet within a tenth of a second of each other when the chequered flag fell.

MP Motorsport plucked Felipe Drugovich from FIA Formula 3 at the end of 2019 and he turned out to be a revelation, they will be hoping the same can be said of Lirim Zendeli who was fifth quickest ahead of Robert Shwartzman.

Drugovich himself was tenth in the morning as Ralph Boschung, Richard Verschoor and Oscar Piastri impressed again.

Campos bossed the afternoon session with Boschung leading his rookie teammate Gianluca Petecof and Armstrong’s DAMS teammate Roy Nissany.

The lap times were almost three seconds slower than the morning benchmark as everyone focussed on race preparations and pit-stop practice on the heat of the Bahrain desert.

The new Formula 2 season will begin at the Sakhir International Circuit on 26-28^th March with everyone hoping 2021 will be their year.