Wickens tops first official F2 test

The Canadian driver set a best time of 59.433s in the afternoon session to beat fellow Red Bull protege Mirko Bortolotti by 0.168s. Although the cars had run in untimed shakedown tests yesterday, this was the first fully-fledged group practice day for the new Williams-designed F2 machines.

"It was a good reward and a good way to end the first test day of testing, but ultimately it's only the first day of a long season," said Wickens.

"I really enjoyed it and I felt very comfortable in the car. The competition is very tight. I was surprised at one point when I was only three tenths off the best time, but I was way down in the overall positions. It's definitely what you can expect from the whole season and I think it should be good."

Bortolotti was pleasantly surprised to be as high as second, having taken a conservative approach to the day.

"To be honest I just wanted to learn the car and track today so I wasn't focused on times, but when I saw that I was second I was really pleased," said the Italian Formula 3 champion.

Alex Brundle completed the top three, ahead of GP2 convert Andy Soucek and Phillip Eng. Soucek had been quickest in the morning session, followed by Eng and Milos Pavlovic.

After a further group test at Silverstone later this month, the championship commences at Valencia on 29-31 May.

Leading Wednesday times:

Pos  Driver               Time       Gap
 1.  Robert Wickens       59.433s
 2.  Mirko Bortolotti     59.601s    + 0.168s
 3.  Alex Brundle         59.655s    + 0.222s
 4.  Andy Soucek          59.763s    + 0.330s
 5.  Philipp Eng          59.963s    + 0.530s
 6.  Milos Pavlovic       59.970s    + 0.537s
 7.  Julien Jousse        59.974s    + 0.541s
 8.  Sebastian Hohenthal  1m00.070s  + 0.637s
 9.  Mikhail Aleshin      1m00.147s  + 0.714s
10.  Tobias Hegewald      1m00.164s  + 0.731s