The 19-man field completed the day tightly bunched up, with the top 11 drivers ending up within half a second and the slowest car of Keyvan Andres Soori only being 1.1s adrift of the leader.

Just like most of the field, Newey set his best time in the morning session, as colder temperatures prevented the field from improving during the afternoon.

Newey narrowly edged out fellow Britons Callum Ilott and Lando Norris for the top spot, the latter just eighth hundredths behind, finishing as the day's top F3 rookie.

Ilott's Prema teammates Guan Yu Zhou and Maximilian Gunther completed the top five.

Pedro Piquet was sixth, ahead of Carlin's test driver Jake Dennis and last year's rookie champion Joel Eriksson.

Carlin duo Ferdinand Habsburg and Jehan Daruvala were ninth and 10th respectively.

European F3 testing will conclude on March 28-29 at the Red Bull Ring.

Day 2 results