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Practice report

Barcelona F3: Piquet tops first practice of new era

Pedro Piquet, son of three-time Formula 1 champion Nelson, topped the first session of the new FIA Formula 3 Championship in Barcelona.

Pedro Piquet, Trident

Pedro Piquet, Trident

Malcolm Griffiths / Motorsport Images

Trident driver Piquet jumped to the top of the leaderboard in the last three minutes of Friday morning's 45-minute free practice session with a lap of 1m33.255s.

Red Bull junior Juri Vips steered his Hitech Grand Prix-run car to second, 0.009s behind Piquet, making the most of improving track conditions to move up the order in the closing minutes.

Ferrari Academy driver Robert Shwartzman had topped most of the session, initially clearing the field by half a second, but his time ended up 0.255s shy of Piquet's.

Niko Kari jumped up the order late on to give Trident two cars in the top four, with GP3 veteran Jake Hughes in fifth for new single-seater squad HWA.

Carlin’s Logan Sargeant took sixth ahead of Shwartzman’s fellow Ferrari junior and Prema teammate Marcus Armstrong.

Simo Laaksonen was eighth for MP Motorsport, ahead of the top ART Grand Prix car of David Beckmann, whose session was hampered by picking up front wing damage by making contact with Fabio Scherer at Turn 12. Renault junior Ye Yifei rounded out the top 10 for Hitech.

Another Hitech driver, Leonardo Pulcini, set the fastest pre-season testing lap at Barcelona this year, but could only manage 24th, nearly two seconds off the pace.

Pulcini, however, did not use a second set of tyres unlike most of his rivals, and described himself as "confident" heading into qualifying.

Practice results:

Cla # Driver Team Time Gap
1 18 Brazil Pedro Piquet
Italy Trident 1'33.255
2 21 Estonia Jüri Vips
United Kingdom HitechGP 1'33.264 0.009
3 28 Russian Federation Robert Shwartzman
Italy Prema Powerteam 1'33.510 0.255
4 19 Finland Niko Kari
Italy Trident 1'33.519 0.264
5 11 United Kingdom Jake Hughes
Germany HWA AG 1'33.766 0.511
6 31 United States Logan Sargeant
Italy Prema Powerteam 1'33.879 0.624
7 26 New Zealand Marcus Armstrong
Italy Prema Powerteam 1'33.923 0.668
8 5 Finland Simo Laaksonen
Netherlands MP Motorsport 1'33.938 0.683
9 1 Germany David Beckmann
France ART Grand Prix 1'34.059 0.804
10 22 China Ye Yifei
United Kingdom HitechGP 1'34.144 0.889
11 27 India Jehan Daruvala
Italy Prema Powerteam 1'34.211 0.956
12 3 Denmark Christian Lundgaard
France ART Grand Prix 1'34.237 0.982
13 17 Canada Devlin DeFrancesco
Italy Trident 1'34.301 1.046
14 10 Netherlands Bent Viscaal
Germany HWA AG 1'34.321 1.066
15 2 United Kingdom Max Fewtrell
France ART Grand Prix 1'34.367 1.112
16 30 Brazil Felipe Drugovich
Italy Prema Powerteam 1'34.475 1.220
17 6 Netherlands Richard Verschoor
Netherlands MP Motorsport 1'34.608 1.353
18 12 Germany Keyvan Andres
Germany HWA AG 1'34.755 1.500
19 7 Germany Lirim Zendeli
Czech Republic Charouz Racing System 1'34.860 1.605
20 29 Japan Teppei Natori
Italy Prema Powerteam 1'34.877 1.622
21 23 Italy Alex Peroni
Spain Campos Racing 1'35.038 1.783
22 4 Australia Liam Lawson
Netherlands MP Motorsport 1'35.053 1.798
23 25 Sebastian Fernandez
Spain Campos Racing 1'35.139 1.884
24 20 Italy Leonardo Pulcini
United Kingdom HitechGP 1'35.192 1.937
25 16 Germany Andreas Estner
Switzerland Jenzer Motorsport 1'35.219 1.964
26 14 Japan Yuki Tsunoda
Switzerland Jenzer Motorsport 1'35.573 2.318
27 9 South Africa Raoul Hyman
Czech Republic Charouz Racing System 1'35.725 2.470
28 15 Russian Federation Artem Petrov
Switzerland Jenzer Motorsport 1'35.814 2.559
29 8 Switzerland Fabio Scherer
Czech Republic Charouz Racing System 1'36.140 2.885
30 24 Italy Alessio Deledda
Spain Campos Racing 1'36.241 2.986

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