GP2 Barcelona: McLaren junior Stoffel Vandoorne leads practice

The McLaren junior, driving for the ART Grand Prix team, outpaced his nearest challenger - Russian Time's Mitch Evans - by 0.581 seconds during the 45 minutes of running.

Racing Engineering driver Alexander Rossi and Evans briefly disputed top spot with Vandoorne, before the Belgian banged in two laps quick enough to finish on top.

He relegated Evans to second place with a time of 1m30.415s, later improving that to 1m30.171s to put the rest of the field in the shade.

Rossi ended up third, six tenths off the pace and ahead of the DAMS entry of Pierre Gasly.

Nathanael Berthon, fresh from the Lazarus squad's maiden GP2 podium in Bahrain last month, was fifth fastest having briefly got involved with the battle at the top of the timing screen early on.

Status driver Richie Stanaway was sixth ahead of Bahrain sprint-race winner Ryo Haryanto, who was the last driver within a second of the pace.

DAMS driver Alex Lynn was ninth fastest ahead of Raffaele Marciello, the latter jumping back into a GP2 car shortly after participating in Formula 1 free practice for Sauber.

GP2 returnee Johnny Cecotto was 14th fastest for the Hilmer Motorsport team, with category debutant Nick Yelloly 23rd fastest on his first outing ahead of Sergey Sirotkin, whose running was restricted to just five slow laps.

FREE PRACTICE TIMES: