Hamda Al Qubaisi leads timesheets in second day of testing

Hamda Al Qubaisi topped the timesheets for the second day in a row as testing came to an end in Aragon. The Emirati set the fastest time in the morning session and became the only driver to clock in a lap under two minutes, with a 1:59.937 in a day that remained sunny throughout.

Under a second separated the whole grid in the morning session as the drivers set a combined 480 laps, with the top three just two tenths apart.

Rodin Carlin’s Abbi Pulling finished in P2 in the earlier session, but it was her teammate Jessica Edgar who banked the most laps of the stint, completing 42 tours of the 5.344km track.

In the afternoon, Filipino driver Bianca Bustamante led the way ahead of Pulling and Series leader and teammate Marta García, with a time of 2:00.152. The drivers continued to push throughout the second outing, completing a total of 384 laps to take the daily total past 850.

PREMA Racing’s Bustamante was delighted with the improvement she made across the two days of running: “I really enjoyed Aragon, I have never been here before, so I think it was a huge challenge for myself to keep on improving in the areas I had to work on. The extra track time helped me quite a lot to work on my craft and technique.”

“I think we hit our targets for this event, of course at first we were learning the track but by the end we were pushing performance and we hit the goals that we set and even went beyond them. For Day 2 we were quite consistent, not too far away from the ultimate pace, but on the last run of new tyres we eventually got the result of P1.”

Ahead of Round 4 in Zandvoort next week, Bustamante also gave her thoughts as she prepares to visit the Dutch track for the first time: “Zandvoort is a new track for me and there is a lot of pressure because I want to perform well. We need to prepare as much as possible before the weekend, watching onboards and going into the sim. As always, I am not really looking for a result but growth and progression."

2023 F1 ACADEMY – ARAGON TEST, DAY 2, MORNING SESSION

2023 F1 ACADEMY – ARAGON TEST, DAY 2, AFTERNOON SESSION