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European F3 testing: Ilott fastest again on Red Bull Ring day two

Callum Ilott topped Formula 3 European Championship pre-season testing at the Red Bull Ring for a second successive day

Prema Powerteam is renowned for staying under the radar during testing, so the form of the Italian team's expected title-challenging duo - Ilott and Maximilian Gunther - in heading the morning and afternoon sessions respectively looks ominous for its rivals.

Ilott and his Dallara-Mercedes set two laps at the end of a 10-lap run just after the midway point of the morning session that were quicker than the best anyone else could manage.

The Briton's best lap of all, a 1m22.950s, was more than two tenths of a second inside Lance Stroll's qualifying lap record at the circuit.

Closest in the morning was fellow Brit Jake Hughes, the Hitech GP driver finishing 0.146 seconds adrift as the Silverstone-based team appeared to focus more on qualifying runs for the first time since the four days of official testing began.

Hughes pipped Motopark's BMW junior Joel Eriksson by 0.002s, with Van Amersfoort Racing duo David Beckmann and Harrison Newey next up, and Honda protege Tadasuke Makino, in the second Hitech car, completing the top six.

Gunther was seventh in the morning but his afternoon-topping time was good enough to place him second overall on the day.

After the German had set his mark, Newey managed to get down to a time just 0.028s away to take second in session, with Prema's Ferrari junior Guan Yu Zhou managing third.

Ilott, Eriksson and VAR's Pedro Piquet completed the top six in the afternoon.

Best of the Carlin runners in both sessions was Lando Norris, who was 11th in the morning and 10th in the afternoon.

The two days of testing at the Red Bull Ring - the last running, barring private tests, before the opening race weekend at Silverstone in two weeks' time - have been largely trouble-free, although there was a red flag in the afternoon when Beckmann spun into the gravel.

Wednesday's running was notable for the closeness of the times, with the top 17 of the 19 runners covered by just half a second on an 83s lap.

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