Bonanomi takes Super Pole at Spa

Bonanomi was fastest in his qualifying group on two occasions in his rookie season with RC Motorsport last year, but in each time was denied pole through being drawn in an earlier, and therefore slower, group.

Van der Garde could only manage second fastest for P1 Motorsport, having been unbeatable in all four collective tests earlier in the weekend, and in qualifying this morning. But his Super Pole time was just under a tenth of a second adrift of Bonanomi.

Julien Jousse was the first driver to complete a time in his Tech 1 Racing mount, but was usurped by van der Garde half way through the 15-minute session.

At this point Bonanomi was languishing in sixth place, but after improving to third with a time of 2:02.841s, found another four tenths to bounce van der Garde from his perch.

Performance enhancing, adjustable, side-skirts are available to the teams this year, but as the skirts and tyres wore down, the classification stagnated with several minutes left on the clock.

One of the few drivers to improve was Carlin's Canadian driver Robert Wickens, who moved from seventh to fourth over his final two runs.

Pos Driver                 Team           Time         Gap
 1. Marco Bonanomi         Comtec         2:02.478
 2. Giedo Van Der Garde    P1             2:02.511  +0.033
 3. Mikhail Aleshin        Carlin         2:02.629  +0.151
 4. Robert Wickens         Carlin         2:02.696  +0.218
 5. Julien Jousse          Tech 1         2:02.697  +0.219
 6. Bertrand Baguette      Draco          2:02.809  +0.331
 7. Salvador Duran         Interwetten    2:02.822  +0.344
 8. Miguel Molina          Prema          2:03.033  +0.555
 9. Guillaume Moreau       KTR            2:03.269  +0.791
10. Pablo Sanchez          Interwetten    2:03.300  +0.822
11. Borja Garcia           RC             2:03.570  +1.092
12. James Walker           Fortec         2:04.167  +1.689