Van der Garde fastest at Barcelona

Van der Garde, the highest placed series returnee to the championship having finished fifth last year with Victory Engineering, edged out Tech 1 Racing's French rookie Charles Pic by one hundredth of a second.

The three-day test has taken on additional importance given that the first group test in Valencia in March was interrupted by high winds. It is the final opportunity for teams to acclimatise to the new generation of car before the season gets under way at Monza on April 26th.

P1 team boss Roly Vincini said the focus of his team's testing programme would be on gaining knowledge of the change to a longer wheelbase car and the new for 2008 dampers.

"Barcelona is a test programme for Monaco, Monza and Spa," said Vincini. "If you have a car that's car set-up for Barcelona you'll have a good car, but it doesn't mean you'll have a good car for (the differing demands of) Monza, that's the problem we have at the moment."

Speaking before the test Van der Garde commented; "Barcelona is crucial. It is good we have three days because for the past four months we have only driven one day. Last year my preparation was completely different. I missed the first test and only went to the Nurburgring.

"Then it was straight into the first race at Monza. It was hard, even though Monza was a good weekend. We had different tyres at Monza and everyone was complaining about them, but I loved it because it produced massive oversteer. We tuned the car a little bit and our set-up was great. Then we went to the second race where we had different tyres, which we used for the rest of the season, and I had massive understeer.

"I had a few possibilities to achieve a good result last year, but not that many. When I jumped into the P1, or P1 by Cram, car at the end of last year, I was straight away in first place. In the high-speed corners it was incredible compared to the Victory car.

"I was happy with that but still we have to fine-tune the new car, and hopefully we can retain our competitiveness. Everyone is happy at P1 and I am confident. I just have to work hard and kick arse."

Pos  Driver                     Team               Time      Laps
 1.  Giedo Van der Garde        P1 Motorsport      1:35.229   38
 2.  Charles Pic                Tech 1             1:35.234   44
 3.  Daniil Move                KTR                1:35.465   34
 4.  Alvaro Barba               Prema              1:35.634   43
 5.  Pablo Sanchez              Interwetten        1:35.642   41
 6.  Miguel Molina              Prema              1:35.675   35
 7.  Bertrand Baguette          Draco              1:35.684   35
 8.  Robert Wickens             Carlin             1:35.894   24
 9.  Marco Barba                Prema              1:36.008   29
10.  Mikhail Aleshin            Carlin             1:36.101   27
11.  Marco Bonanomi             Comtec             1:36.108   41
12.  Marcos Martinez            Pons               1:36.443   47
13.  Borja Garcia               RC                 1:36.756   40
14.  Alexandre Marsoin          Epsilon            1:37.140   34
15.  James Walker               Fortec             1:37.185   38
16.  Maximo Cortes              Pons               1:37.251   37
17.  Fabio Carbone              Ultimate/Signature 1:37.612    5
18.  Salvador Duran             Interwetten        1:37.676    7
19.  Pasquale Di Sabatino       Comtec             1:37.855   29
20.  Aleix Alcaraz              RC                 1:38.000   43
21.  Julien Jousse              Tech 1             1:38.049   24
22.  Claudio Cantelli           Ultimate/Signature 1:39.083   22
23.  Mario Romancini            Epsilon            1:39.306   21
24.  Pippa Mann                 P1                 1:41.472    5
25.  Guillaume Moreau           KTR                1:48.384    6