Jerez FR3.5: Matthieu Vaxiviere sets practice pace

The Lotus driver led the way in the cooler first session, heading Will Buller by nearly two tenths of a second.

Of the championship's regular frontrunners Pierre Gasly had the best day, setting the fourth fastest time in the morning and topping the afternoon session on new tyres.

But despite Gasly chipping away at his best effort in the final 15 minutes of the day's running, his afternoon time of 1m29.652s was more than half a second adrift of Vaxiviere's lap from earlier in the day.

Gasly was joined at the front during the qualifying simulation runs by championship favourite Carlos Sainz Jr, who only needs to finish seventh in race one on Saturday to seal the title.

Sainz's only remaining title rival, Roberto Merhi, was one of the drivers who did manage to improve his time during the afternoon, but that was only enough to put him 19th in the session, after he had propped up the field during first practice.

Merhi admitted at the end of the day that he and Zeta "have much to improve", and he conceded that there was little cause for optimism heading into the rest of the weekend at this stage.

The lack of pace in the track by the end of the day - and the fact that a few teams used their new tyres earlier than usual - meant that the second session did not feature its traditional flurry of activity on the timing screens.

Unusually, by the time the chequered flag came at the end of second practice, only 11 of the 21 cars were still circulating.

Practice 1:

Practice 2