Adrian Quaife-Hobbs stays on top in second Auto GP practice in Brazil

The Briton improved on his earlier free practice one effort by just over a tenth of second to record a lap of 1m12.630s for Super Nova.

Series debutant Antonio Pizzonia was again Quaife-Hobbs' closest challenger in an impressive guest appearance with Ombra. Running in place of the GP2-tied Giancarlo Serenelli, Pizzonia narrowed his morning deficit to Quaife-Hobbs to 0.208s.

Manor MP Motorsport's Daniel de Jong initially topped the timing screens, and held second spot entering the final two minutes of the half hour session. But the Dutchman was bumped down to an eventual fourth by Pizzonia and Pal Varhaug (Virtuosi UK), the latter finishing just 0.040s behind Pizzonia in third.

The second Manor MP entry of Chris van der Drift also began the session competitively before slipping to fifth. Fresh from a Formula 2 outing at Brands Hatch last weekend, Max Snegirev completed the top six for Campos.

The session was red-flagged when Sergio Campana crashed on the exit of the final corner. The Italian Formula 3 champion removed the left-hand wheels of his Euronova car in the initial impact and skidded to a halt on the inside of the pit straight.

Campana escaped unhurt, but could not conceal his disappointment that the accident is likely to rule him out of qualifying.

Euronova's regular driver Sergey Sirotkin sat out the session due to a gearbox problem that is expected to be fixed in time for qualifying.

Pos  Driver               Team         Time       Gap
 1.  Adrian Quaife-Hobbs  Super Nova   1m12.630s
 2.  Antonio Pizzonia     Ombra        1m12.838s  + 0.208s
 3.  Pal Varhaug          Virtuosi UK  1m12.878s  + 0.248s
 4.  Daniel de Jong       Manor MP     1m12.960s  + 0.330s
 5.  Chris van der Drift  Manor MP     1m13.179s  + 0.549s
 6.  Maxim Snegirev       Campos       1m13.840s  + 1.210s
 7.  Giuseppe Cipriani    Campos       1m14.628s  + 1.998s
 8.  Rafael Suzuki        Ombra        1m14.641s  + 2.011s
 9.  Sergio Campana       Euronova     1m15.428s  + 2.798s
10.  Francesco Dracone    Virtuosi UK  1m15.448s  + 2.818s
11.  Michele la Rosa      MLR 71       1m16.680s  + 4.050s