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Gommendy, Wissel lead practice

Series returnee Tristan Gommendy and championship hopeful Max Wissel set the pace in Superleague Formula free practice at Monza today

FC Porto's Gommendy was an absentee from the most recent meeting at Estoril, while making way for local hero Alvaro Parente. He was the only driver to break under the 1m38s mark this morning, his fastest time of 1m37.995s - seven tenths of a second ahead of the championship leader, Liverpool's Adrian Valles.

FC Basel racer Max Wissel was third fastest in the half hour morning session. The German, who lies in third place in the standings some 58 points behind Valles, improved in the afternoon to record the benchmark time of 1m37.196s.

Zolder race two winner Esteban Guerrieri put in a strong final flying lap to move up to second on the timesheet in the Olympiacos entry. The Argentine edged out Monza specialist Giorgio Pantano's AC Milan car by a tenth, as a trio of Frenchmen completed the top six. Pantano's fellow Formula 1 refugee Sebastian Bourdais ended the day fourth, ahead of Gommendy and Olympique Lyonnais's Nelson Panciatici.

Valles was delayed by gearbox gremlins in the afternoon and could only muster the 12th fastest time: "We had a problem with the blip on the downchange," said the Spaniard. "I am not too worried for the race, though, I'm pretty confident that our pace will be ok."

Rangers' John Martin was sidelined in the morning with a suspected crank sensor failure, while Pedro Petiz stopped at the exit of the second Lesmo in the afternoon with the fuel pressure alarms sounding on his Zakspeed-run Sporting Lisbon Panoz.

Organisers have opted not to permit extreme low downforce set-ups, such as the removal of rear wing elements, and as a consequence laptimes are some way off comparative single-seater championships this weekend (approximately eight seconds behind this year's GP2 pace at Monza).

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