Pic tops wet GP2 qualifying

A restart with four and a half minutes remaining made for a frantic end to the session, with provisional polesitter Adrian Zaugg of Trident seeing his time bettered by Pastor Maldonado (Rapax), iSport's Oliver Turvey and finally Pic in the last minute, with the Frenchman's 1m41.638s putting him 0.268 seconds clear of series leader Maldonado.

Turvey held on to third and will start alongside Addax's Sergio Perez, who vaulted up from 20th in the final moments, with Zaugg, Racing Engineering's Dani Clos, Rapax's Luiz Razia and Super Nova's Marcus Ericsson completing the top eight.

The session was interrupted twice by red flags, the first coming out when Ocean's Max Chilton spun and stalled on the main straight. The Briton had been an impressive fourth at the time but was eventually shuffled back to 15th, and the team's misery was completed with Fabio Leimer slid into the barriers while Chilton's car was being recovered.

The second red flag was prompted by iSport's Davide Valsecchi and ART's Sam Bird crashing almost simultaneously at different parts of the circuit, and the duo will start from 19th and 22nd respectively.

Romain Grosjean was on target for a front row start in his comeback race for most of the session, but dropped back through the field in the late scramble and ended up 13th for DAMS.

Pos  Driver               Team                Time       Gap
 1.  Charles Pic          Arden               1m41.638s
 2.  Pastor Maldonado     Rapax               1m41.906s  + 0.268s
 3.  Oliver Turvey        iSport              1m42.023s  + 0.385s
 4.  Sergio Perez         Barwa Addax         1m42.363s  + 0.725s
 5.  Adrian Zaugg         Trident             1m42.470s  + 0.832s
 6.  Daniel Clos          Racing Engineering  1m42.617s  + 0.979s
 7.  Luiz Razia           Rapax               1m42.922s  + 1.284s
 8.  Marcus Ericsson      Super Nova          1m42.945s  + 1.307s
 9.  Jules Bianchi        ART                 1m43.008s  + 1.370s
10.  Giedo van der Garde  Barwa Addax         1m43.234s  + 1.596s
11.  Luca Filippi         Super Nova          1m43.335s  + 1.697s
12.  Johnny Cecotto       Trident             1m43.337s  + 1.699s
13.  Romain Grosjean      DAMS                1m43.402s  + 1.764s
14.  Christian Vietoris   Racing Engineering  1m43.504s  + 1.866s
15.  Max Chilton          Ocean               1m43.507s  + 1.869s
16.  Michael Herck        DPR                 1m43.607s  + 1.969s
17.  Alberto Valerio      Coloni              1m43.694s  + 2.056s
18.  Davide Valsecchi     iSport              1m44.162s  + 2.524s
19.  Ho-Pin Tung          DAMS                1m44.173s  + 2.535s
20.  Giacomo Ricci        DPR                 1m44.279s  + 2.641s
21.  Vlado Arabadjiev     Coloni              1m44.289s  + 2.651s
22.  Sam Bird             ART                 1m44.487s  + 2.849s
23.  Rodolfo Gonzalez     Arden               1m44.700s  + 3.062s
24.  Fabio Leimer         Ocean               1m46.373s  + 4.735s