Sérgio Sette Câmara has claimed the first bragging rights of the 2019 season by topping this morning’s FIA Formula 2 Championship free practice session with a laptime of 1:43.618 at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, leading a DAMS 1-2 by 0.3 seconds from teammate Nicholas Latifi and Ralph Boschung.

The session opened to the usual hot and sunny conditions, with most of the drivers heading straight out on track to make sure that their cars were ready for the weekend ahead. The opening 15 minutes was mostly about car set up, with Jordan King, Anthoine Hubert and Nyck de Vries all taking a turn on the top of the timesheets.

Sette Câmara grabbed the top spot at the 20 minute mark, with a number of drivers putting in a competitive time as they worked on their qualifying setups, but it wasn’t to last as most of the field returned to the pits for fresh rubber ahead of race runs in the latter stages of the session.

Behind the top 3 Luca Ghiotto, Callum Ilott, Guanyu Zhou, de Vries, Louis Delétraz, Juan Manuel Correa and Nobuharu Matsushita rounded out the top half of the grid, and with 12 drivers within 1 second of the top spot this evening’s qualifying session promises to bring more excitement.