Fabrizio Crestani leads first Auto GP practice at Donington Park

The Lazarus driver ended the session as the only driver to dip under the 1m18s barrier, leaving him just over two tenths of a second clear of the rest of the field.

Kevin Ceccon was second fastest despite having never been to Donington Park, with Crestani's team-mate Fabio Onidi less than five hundredths of a second down the road in third.

Championship leader Luca Filippi headed Super Nova team-mate Jon Lancaster for fourth, although the Briton lost nearly half the session due to a radiator leak.

Samuele Buttarelli was sixth ahead of Bruno Mendez and Adam Carroll, the former A1GP champion making his Auto GP debut for Campos Racing this weekend.

Adrian Campos Jr finished 14th fastest on his return to the series after a lengthy break following his heavy accident at Monza in which he fractured two vertebrae.

Russia's Sergey Afanasiev - currently fourth in the standings - will miss Friday's entire running due to problems with his visa. It is not know whether he will return in time for the first race of the weekend on Saturday morning.

Pos  Driver                Team        Time       Gap
 1.  Fabrizio Crestani     Lazarus     1m17.841s
 2.  Kevin Ceccon          Ombra       1m18.083s  + 0.242s
 3.  Fabio Onidi           Lazarus     1m18.125s  + 0.284s
 4.  Luca Filippi          Super Nova  1m18.192s  + 0.351s
 5.  Jon Lancaster         Super Nova  1m18.485s  + 0.644s
 6.  Stefano Buttarelli    TP          1m18.504s  + 0.663s
 7.  Bruno Mendez          Campos      1m18.540s  + 0.699s
 8.  Adam Carroll          Campos      1m18.867s  + 1.026s
 9.  Rio Haryanto          DAMS        1m18.901s  + 1.060s
10.  Giovanni Venturini    Durango     1m19.043s  + 1.202s
11.  Giuseppe Cipriani     Durango     1m19.335s  + 1.494s
12.  Daniel de Jong        MP          1m19.600s  + 1.759s
13.  Pasquale di Sabatino  TP          1m19.645s  + 1.804s
14.  Adrian Campos Jr      Campos      1m19.778s  + 1.937s
15.  Francesco Dracone     Emmebi      1m24.005s  + 6.164s