Markus Pommer tops opening day of Formula 2 testing at Silverstone

The 21-year-old German, who is switching from German F3 this year, was quickest in three of the four sessions that took place and set his best time of 1m48.272s on fresh rubber and with overboost enabled with time running out at the end of the day.

"The car has felt fantastic all day and we've hardly had to make any changes. The morning times were really good and we could have gone quicker but we didn't want to push too hard too soon," Pommer said.

"During the third session we used worn tyres and concentrated on longer, race runs which went really well and the tyres didn't drop off at all. The final overboost session was really good too and I'm feeling confident for the season ahead."

With times around two seconds faster than the same point last year - due to a series of winter upgrades to the F2 machine - Mihai Marinescu was Pommer's nearest challenger, 0.375s slower.

Britain's Luciano Bacheta and Swiss driver Christopher Zanella - the 2011 F2 runner-up - headed Matheo Tuscher in completing the top five.

Dean Stoneman, driving an F2 machine for the first time since being diagnosed with testicular cancer a little over a year ago, was ninth fastest overall. The 2010 F2 champion clawed his way closer to the pace as the day progressed and ended up 1.077s off Pommer's mark.

Pos  Driver                Time       Gap
 1.  Markus Pommer         1m48.272s
 2.  Mihai Marinescu       1m48.647s  + 0.375s
 3.  Luciano Bacheta       1m48.682s  + 0.410s
 4.  Christopher Zanella   1m48.856s  + 0.584s
 5.  Matheo Tuscher        1m49.058s  + 0.786s
 6.  Alex Fontana          1m49.114s  + 0.842s
 7.  Kourosh Khani         1m49.219s  + 0.947s
 8.  Daniel McKenzie       1m49.395s  + 1.033s
 9.  Dean Stoneman         1m49.349s  + 1.077s
10.  Axcil Jeffries        1m49.537s  + 1.265s
11.  James Cole            1m49.586s  + 1.314s
12.  Hector Hurst          1m49.603s  + 1.331s
13.  Dino Zamparelli       1m49.788s  + 1.516s
14.  Plamen Kralev         1m49.868s  + 1.596s
15.  Parthiva Surehswaren  1m50.114s  + 1.842s
16.  David Zhu             1m50.209s  + 1.937s
17.  Jose Luis Abadin      1m50.275s  + 2.003s
18.  Mauro Calamia         1m50.945s  + 2.673s