F3 Bahrain- Day 1

Free Practice-

With the teams already having some track action here for the pre-season test, the field of 30 drivers took to track so set themselves up for hopfeully a competitive weekend.

After the light went green and a few flurry of laps, it was MP Motorsport’s Caio Collet who set the fastest, however his effort was still some way of the true pace.

The times began to tumber, as the drivers gathered further experience at the Bahrain International Circuit. But it was the reigning team champions, Trident who got off to a strong start this weekend, as Roman Stanek ended Free Practice on top with a 1:48.012.

PREMA’s Arthur Leclerc moved himself up into second place, in which he was less than a tenth of a second behind Stanek. With Rookie, Gregoire Saucy launching himself into 3rd.

In the final 10 minute, there was a brief yellow flag due to Reece Ushijiam coming to a stop in sector one but was able to get his car moving again.

Position	Driver	Team	Laptime
1	Roman Stanek	Trident	1:48.012
2	Arthur Leclerc	PREMA Racing	1:48.090
3	Gregoire Saucy	ART Grand Prix	1:48.099
4	Izack Hadjar	HiTech Grand Prix	1:48.285
5	Caio Collet	MP Motorsport	1:48.402

Qualifying-

Gregoire Saucy was the first to jump to the top of the timesheets, placing himself just over one-tenth of a second in front of Roman Stanek. Most of the drivers, then returned to the pit lane as the qualifying session hit the halfway point.

With 10 minutes to go, a lot of the drivers came out of the pitlane and set their minds to some more push laps. Colapinto set a fire laptime, which saw no-one be able to replace him at the top spot.

The top 12 switch round for tomorrows sprint race, so we will have Rookie, Zak O’Sullivan on pole position, lined up next to another rookie and FDA driver, Ollie Bearman with David Vidales rounding out the top 3 for tomorrows starting grid.

Position	Driver	Team	Laptime
1	Franco Colapinto	Van Amersfoort Racing	1:46.249
2	Roman Stanek	Trident	1:46.314
3	Kush Maini	MP Motorsport	1:46.322
4	Gregoire Saucy	ART Grand Prix	1:46.410
5	Victor Martins	ART Grand Prix	1:46.412
6	Juan Manuel Correa	ART Grand Prix	1:46.600
7	Zane Maloney	Trident	1:46.622
8	Alexander Smolyar	MP Motorsport	1:46.642
9	Isack Hadjar	HiTech Grand Prix	1:46.649
10	David Vidales	Campos Racing	1:46.707
11	Ollie Bearman	PREMA Racing	1:46.843
12	Zak O’Sullivan	Carlin	1:46.860

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