Baguette stays top in second practice

With the newly-completed circuit yet to fully rubber in, the Belgian was able to slice 1.7 seconds from his earlier effort.

Chris van der Drift, hunting his and Epsilon Euskadi's maiden win of the season, went second quickest in a session that was interrupted by three red flags. The final stoppage occurred just seven minutes before the chequered flag, shortly after van der Drift had toppled Baguette's best time with a lap of 1m45.273s.

With the clock still counting down, Baguette was afforded just one flying lap to reclaim his position when the session restarted, and responded with a 1m45.053s.

Julian Leal had one of his best showings of the season with Prema to end the day in third, while Comtec's new, all-British pairing of Jon Lancaster and Greg Mansell took fourth and sixth positions, sandwiching early season points leader Marcos Martinez.

James Walker was eighth fastest for P1 Motorsport, and the Jersey driver felt that his plans to overhaul Charles Pic for second in the championship remained on course.

"We have spent the entire day experimenting, and the tyres that I used to set my final lap time were really old in comparison to some others," said Walker. "I think that we are there or thereabouts, I am not saying we have an advantage, but I think we can do our usual job of making Superpole."

"If I can stay ahead of Pic, then I think we should also be able to handle [the threat of fourth placed] Alguersuari.

"The balance of aero is really important here, because the first part of the lap is quite twisty and then you have a very long straight. If you can get it just right I think that there's a big advantage to be had. If you overdrive, you can lose a lot of time."

Among those to cause red flags today have been Salvador Duran, Bruno Mendez and Mansell. Daniil Move was forced to sit out 10 minutes of track time, after the Russian P1 driver was judged to have set a quick lap under reds.

"The first I saw of a red flag was crossing the start/finish line, but I think the officials only looked at the sector times," said Move.

Pos  Driver               Team             Time       Gap
 1.  Bertrand Baguette    Draco            1m45.053s
 2.  Chris van der Drift  Epsilon Euskadi  1m45.273s  + 0.220s
 3.  Julian Leal          Prema            1m45.766s  + 0.713s
 4.  Jon Lancaster        Comtec           1m45.855s  + 0.802s
 5.  Marcos Martinez      Pons             1m45.933s  + 0.880s
 6.  Greg Mansell         Comtec           1m46.035s  + 0.982s
 7.  Brendon Hartley      Tech 1           1m46.042s  + 0.989s
 8.  James Walker         P1               1m46.187s  + 1.134s
 9.  Filip Salaquarda     Prema            1m46.222s  + 1.169s
10.  Daniil Move          P1               1m46.252s  + 1.199s
11.  Federico Leo         Pons             1m46.390s  + 1.337s
12.  Sten Pentus          Mofaz            1m46.498s  + 1.445s
13.  Marco Barba          Draco            1m46.570s  + 1.517s
14.  Fairuz Fauzy         Mofaz            1m47.019s  + 1.966s
15.  Anton Nebylitskiy    SG               1m47.039s  + 1.986s
16.  Esteban Guerrieri    RC               1m47.056s  + 2.003s
17.  Jaime Alguersuari    Carlin           1m47.187s  + 2.134s
18.  Charles Pic          Tech 1           1m47.267s  + 2.214s
19.  Salvador Duran       Interwetten      1m47.305s  + 2.252s
20.  Keisuke Kunimoto     Epsilon Euskadi  1m47.379s  + 2.326s
21.  Mihai Marinescu      Interwetten      1m47.834s  + 2.781s
22.  Oliver Turvey        Carlin           1m47.910s  + 2.857s
23.  Guillaume Moreau     SG               1m48.261s  + 3.208s
24.  Bruno Mendez         RC               1m49.516s  + 4.463s