By alley - Dec 4, 2015, 11:01 AM ET

GP2: Honda's Matsushita tops final test day

Honda protege Nobuharu Matsushita led the final day of GP2 post-season testing in Abu Dhabi for 2015 championship-winning team ART Grand Prix. The Japanese driver had stepped aside after heading both sessions on Wednesday, but he returned to beat day two pacesetter Nicholas Latifi to Friday's best time with a lap of 1m48.313s in the evening.

Week-long DAMS driver Latifi held onto the best time of the test though with his 1m47.860s from Thursday.

Sergey Sirotkin was third quickest on Friday to bring some cheer on a difficult GP2 debut for Prema, which encountered several technical issues after taking over the former Lazarus cars.

After a stuck throttle caused Felix Rosenqvist to crash on Thursday, Pierre Gasly barely ran at all on Friday due to a broken gearbox.

Formula Renault 3.5 champion Oliver Rowland was fourth quickest after moving from Prema to DAMS to take over from fellow Briton Alex Lynn. He narrowly missed out on the best time in the slower morning session, beaten by Mitch Evans by just 0.004 seconds. Evans was later excluded from the evening session after his Campos-run car was found to be underweight.

GP3 runner-up Luca Ghiotto rounded out the test with the best day of any GP2 newcomer this week. Joining Rapax for day three, he was third in the morning and then fifth in the evening, closely followed on both occasions by Andre Negrao in the sister car.

MORNING TIMES

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Mitch Evans	Campos Racing	1m48.922ss	1m48.922s	24
2	Oliver Rowland	DAMS	1m48.926ss	0.004s	22
3	Luca Ghiotto	Rapax	1m49.057ss	0.135s	30
4	Andre Negrao	Rapax	1m49.154ss	0.232s	27
5	Sergey Sirotkin	Prema Racing	1m49.201ss	0.279s	15
6	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	1m49.243ss	0.321s	34
7	Tio Ellinas	Trident	1m49.246ss	0.324s	35
8	Nick Yelloly	MP Motorsport	1m49.331ss	0.409s	24
9	Antonio Giovinazzi	Carlin	1m49.361ss	0.439s	23
10	Richie Stanaway	Carlin	1m49.418ss	0.496s	12
11	Marlon Stockinger	ART Grand Prix	1m49.911ss	0.989s	34
12	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden International	1m50.000ss	1.078s	28
13	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	1m50.085ss	1.163s	25
14	Gustav Malja	Status Grand Prix	1m50.152ss	1.230s	20
15	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	1m50.237ss	1.315s	24
16	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	1m50.396ss	1.474s	32
17	Sean Gelael	Campos Racing	1m50.968ss	2.046s	24
18	Andrea Caldarelli	RUSSIAN TIME	1m51.011ss	2.089s	24
19	Artur Janosz	Trident	1m51.026ss	2.104s	6
20	Philo Paz Armand	Status Grand Prix	1m51.173ss	2.251s	32
21	Emil Bernstorff	Arden International	1m51.517ss	2.595s	30
22	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1m53.588ss	4.666s	21
23	Pierre Gasly	Prema Racing	1m55.778ss	6.856s	4
24	Salvatore De Plano	MP Motorsport	1m57.792ss	8.870s	27

EVENING TIMES

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	1m48.313ss	1m48.313s	35
2	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1m48.432ss	0.119s	37
3	Sergey Sirotkin	Prema Racing	1m48.465ss	0.152s	24
4	Oliver Rowland	DAMS	1m48.522ss	0.209s	24
5	Luca Ghiotto	Rapax	1m48.668ss	0.355s	34
6	Andre Negrao	Rapax	1m48.710ss	0.397s	25
7	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	1m48.737ss	0.424s	25
8	Marlon Stockinger	ART Grand Prix	1m48.752ss	0.439s	33
9	Richie Stanaway	Carlin	1m49.046ss	0.733s	32
10	Nick Yelloly	MP Motorsport	1m49.068ss	0.755s	17
11	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	1m49.109ss	0.796s	32
12	Antonio Giovinazzi	Carlin	1m49.192ss	0.879s	36
13	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	1m49.249ss	0.936s	29
14	Gustav Malja	Status Grand Prix	1m49.357ss	1.044s	30
15	Tio Ellinas	Trident	1m49.433ss	1.120s	34
16	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden International	1m49.596ss	1.283s	32
17	Artur Janosz	Trident	1m49.698ss	1.385s	35
18	Emil Bernstorff	Arden International	1m49.706ss	1.393s	35
19	Philo Paz Armand	Status Grand Prix	1m50.395ss	2.082s	30
20	Sean Gelael	Campos Racing	1m50.436ss	2.123s	40
21	Andrea Caldarelli	RUSSIAN TIME	1m50.471ss	2.158s	37
22	Salvatore De Plano	MP Motorsport	1m55.248ss	6.935s	25