Maldonado fastest in free practice

The current series leader set his benchmark lap of 1m40.393s on his first set of tyres and the time remained out of reach for the rest of the field, with Addax's Giedo van der Garde coming closest by finishing 0.129s short of the Venezuelan.

DAMS' Jerome d'Ambrosio was third quickest ahead of Sergio Perez (Addax). Luca Filippi, who returns to the series this weekend as replacement for the injured Josef Kral at Super Nova, finished up 13th.

Virtually everyone did their best times on their first set of tyres, with opportunities to improve in the latter part of the session being thwarted by a flurry of yellow flags. Most were for harmless spins, although Ocean's Fabio Leimer's run was brought to an early end by an engine failure five minutes before the session concluded.

A similar problem prevented Arden's Charles Pic from completing more than three laps, while initial pacesetter Luiz Razia was also an early spectator after his Rapax car came to a stop 10 minutes in.

Pos  Driver               Team                Time       Gap        Laps
 1.  Pastor Maldonado     Rapax               1m40.393s             15
 2.  Giedo van der Garde  Barwa Addax         1m40.588s  + 0.195s   13
 3.  Jerome d'Ambrosio    DAMS                1m40.712s  + 0.319s   14
 4.  Sergio Perez         Barwa Addax         1m40.749s  + 0.356s   14
 5.  Christian Vietoris   Racing Engineering  1m40.962s  + 0.569s   14
 6.  Dani Clos            Racing Engineering  1m41.010s  + 0.617s   11
 7.  Davide Valsecchi     iSport              1m41.028s  + 0.635s   14
 8.  Jules Bianchi        ART                 1m41.140s  + 0.747s   15
 9.  Oliver Turvey        iSport              1m41.141s  + 0.748s   15
10.  Michael Herck        DPR                 1m41.259s  + 0.866s   13
11.  Sam Bird             ART                 1m41.390s  + 0.997s   14
12.  Luiz Razia           Rapax               1m41.434s  + 1.041s   4
13.  Luca Filippi         Super Nova          1m41.721s  + 1.328s   14
14.  Alberto Valerio      Coloni              1m41.826s  + 1.433s   14
15.  Marcus Ericsson      Super Nova          1m42.048s  + 1.655s   15
16.  Fabio Leimer         Ocean               1m42.050s  + 1.657s   8
17.  Rodolfo Gonzalez     Arden               1m42.095s  + 1.702s   14
18.  Adrian Zaugg         Trident             1m42.233s  + 1.840s   15
19.  Giacomo Ricci        DPR                 1m42.238s  + 1.845s   15
20.  Max Chilton          Ocean               1m42.858s  + 2.465s   14
21.  Ho-Pin Tung          DAMS                1m42.956s  + 2.563s   13
22.  Johnny Cecotto       Trident             1m43.099s  + 2.706s   14
23.  Vlado Arabadjiev     Coloni              1m43.326s  + 2.933s   16
24.  Charles Pic          Arden               1m53.076s  + 12.683s  3