Atech CRS GP completed the final pre-season GP3 testing with three days at the Catalunya circuit in Spain. Swiss-Filipino Marlon Stockinger finished the morning session sixth fastest in conditions much cooler than Tuesday’s opening day allowing the Leicestershire-based team and the rest of the 30-car field to lap around a second faster.
Stockinger was the pace-setter for the team, happy with his set up and comfortably settling into the car as he embarks on his first season in GP3. Nick Yelloly was next up, the British racer also heading into his debut season in the European Grands Prix- support series unable to get the most from his new tyres on day two but happy with the progress made in Thursday’s final session.
There was frustration for Swiss Zoel Amberg who suffered with a persistent engine problem over the three days, which caused his car to stop, and which the team were unable to rectify before the final flag.
Marlon Stockinger: “It was a pretty good test, we did three race simulations and got some good data from that so I think we’re well prepared for Turkey. The team did a great job, we worked steadily with a programme of what we wanted to achieve and I think we pretty much ticked all the boxes, so I’m very happy.”
Nick Yelloly: “We’ve been struggling slightly with the set-up today but were able to get in two race runs ready for the opening rounds. We didn’t use new tyres this afternoon as we wanted to concentrate on that but towards the end of the afternoon session, we found quite a bit of time and made some good improvements, which I’m confident will also help when it comes to qualifying.”
Zoel Amberg: “Sadly we had a recurring engine problem, which started on day one and which we just couldn’t sort. It’s disappointing to finish the pre-season tests like this but hopefully we can rectify the problem prior to the opening rounds next month.”
Team Principal David Hayle: “Marlon had a very good day today, managing to get all his sectors together and produce the result he had shown was possible from the start. With Nick we ran all his new tyres in the morning and spent this afternoon doing race runs, which also provided us with lots of information we feel will also help in qualifying, so we’re very happy with that. It was unfortunate for Zoel that we had a recurring engine problem pretty much throughout the test, his car just kept stopping, and we couldn’t get to the bottom of what it was, so sadly he didn’t get very many laps in. But we have several weeks now prior to the opening rounds in Turkey and hopefully we can go into the tests there and have this problem resolved and look forward to a good opening weekend.”
