Palou tops second day of Hungary F3 test

The 20-year-old Catalan, who was third in last season’s Japanese F3 Championship and also made appearances in F2 and Formula V8 3.5 in 2017, finished the second day of running at the Hungarian Grand Prix venue way ahead of the opposition.

Palou set the day’s best time in the morning session, which he topped by a significant 0.274 seconds from Hitech teammate Enaam Ahmed, his superiority seeming to come in the twists of the final sector.

Some late runs in the afternoon session propelled Ahmed and Palou to the top two positions again, with the reigning BRDC F3 champion this time topping the order by 0.032s.

Ahmed’s afternoon time narrowed the overall deficit for the day to Palou to 0.226s, although Palou’s morning lap fell 0.004s short of the effort recorded by Mick Schumacher in topping the first day of testing on Thursday.

Prema Powerteam was hard on the heels of the leading Hitech pair, with Ralf Aron setting the team’s overall best in the morning to go third quickest ahead of Schumacher.

Toyota Racing Series champion and Ferrari protege Robert Shwartzman made a strong improvement in the afternoon session, in which he was third-fastest to end the day in fifth overall, narrowly ahead of Prema teammate and Ferrari stablemate Guan Yu Zhou.

Sacha Fenestraz was the best of the Carlin contingent, the reigning Formula Renault Eurocup champion ending the day seventh overall, while Hitech’s strong form extended to Ben Hingeley, who was fifth in the afternoon and eighth on the day.

Rounding out the top 10 overall was another Ferrari-backed Prema driver, Marcus Armstrong, and leading Motopark contender Sebastian Fernandez. 

Motopark’s Macau Grand Prix winner and Red Bull Junior Dan Ticktum was in the midfield in both sessions, although he topped the times in the relatively fast opening sector in both periods.