By alley - Mar 31, 2016, 8:01 AM ET

GP2: Nato leads as Racing Engineering sweeps test

Norman Nato was back on top on the final day of GP2 Series pre-season testing at Jerez as Racing Engineering completed a clean sweep of the week. His quickest day three time was a 1m24.518s in the morning, which was eight hundredths faster than Arthur Pic and a tenth faster than Nobuharu Matsushita.

Alex Lynn and Nato's teammate Jordan King both had spells on top early on, before ending up fifth and ninth.

With Nato having been quickest on the opening day as well and King fastest on Wednesday, Thursday's result meant Racing Engineering topped every day of the test. In the afternoon Pic was fastest with a 1m25.583s from Rapax team-mate Gustav Malja and Artem Markelov.

The day was affected by a number of red flags, with Oliver Rowland prompting the first when he came to a halt between Turns 8 and 9. Raffaele Marciello caused two of the stoppages, with spins for Nabil Jeffri and Philo Paz Armand plus a mechanical problem for Matsushita also interrupting proceedings.

Thursday's running concluded GP2 testing, with the season opener taking place at Barcelona in mid-May.

MORNING TIMES:

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	1m24.518ss	1m24.518s	31
2	Arthur Pic	Rapax	1m24.592ss	0.074s	23
3	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	1m24.617ss	0.099s	28
4	Pierre Gasly	Prema Racing	1m24.652ss	0.134s	42
5	Alex Lynn	DAMS	1m24.677ss	0.159s	24
6	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	1m24.682ss	0.164s	32
7	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Racing	1m24.688ss	0.170s	37
8	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1m24.689ss	0.171s	19
9	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	1m24.747ss	0.229s	24
10	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	1m24.937ss	0.419s	28
11	Gustav Malja	Rapax	1m24.948ss	0.430s	30
12	Mitch Evans	Jagonya Ayam Campos Racing	1m25.072ss	0.554s	21
13	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	1m25.120ss	0.602s	22
14	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	1m25.134ss	0.616s	16
15	Raffaele Marciello	RUSSIAN TIME	1m25.318ss	0.800s	14
16	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	1m25.339ss	0.821s	34
17	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	1m25.404ss	0.886s	28
18	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	1m25.698ss	1.180s	22
19	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden International	1m25.819ss	1.301s	29
20	Sean Gelael	Jagonya Ayam Campos Racing	1m26.053ss	1.535s	30
21	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	1m26.074ss	1.556s	27

AFTERNOON TIMES:

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Arthur Pic	Rapax	1m25.583ss	1m25.583s	42
2	Gustav Malja	Rapax	1m25.820ss	0.237s	38
3	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	1m26.140ss	0.557s	39
4	Raffaele Marciello	RUSSIAN TIME	1m26.435ss	0.852s	8
5	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden International	1m26.629ss	1.046s	48
6	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	1m27.235ss	1.652s	38
7	Mitch Evans	Jagonya Ayam Campos Racing	1m27.410ss	1.827s	44
8	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	1m28.620ss	3.037s	44
9	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	1m28.761ss	3.178s	37
10	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	1m28.857ss	3.274s	33
11	Sean Gelael	Jagonya Ayam Campos Racing	1m29.988ss	4.405s	52
12	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1m30.115ss	4.532s	34
13	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	1m30.227ss	4.644s	55
14	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	1m30.459ss	4.876s	46
15	Pierre Gasly	Prema Racing	1m30.570ss	4.987s	32
16	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	1m30.580ss	4.997s	50
17	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Racing	1m30.626ss	5.043s	48
18	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	1m30.716ss	5.133s	51
19	Alex Lynn	DAMS	1m30.840ss	5.257s	33
20	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	1m30.854ss	5.271s	42
21	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	1m31.096ss	5.513s	49