Van der Garde tops Nurburgring test

In the morning session, mirroring their standings in the championship, Julien Jousse was van der Garde's nearest challenger, albeit seven tenths of a second adrift of the Dutchman. Ultimate-Signature's Argentinean driver Esteban Guerrieri finished runner-up to van der Garde in the afternoon.

"This morning went quite well even though Giedo has a big gap," said Jousse. "I had a starter motor failure on Thursday and this afternoon I spun at Turn Five, which affected the grip of the tyres afterwards. Even so, I hope to be able to make some big progress in the championship this weekend.

"I also need to start at the front because the first corner is so tight, I remember last year having a touch with (teammate) Alvaro Parente."

With only one set of new tyres available over both sessions, there were discrepancies in times between drivers running on old and new rubber, as well as those who had saved new tyres from Thursday.

Miguel Molina, who headed Thursday morning's three-hour collective test, maintained his strong form with the third fastest time in the morning, before dropping to sixth in the afternoon.

Spa reverse grid winner Bertrand Baguette was fourth for Draco, ahead of Spaniard Aleix Alcaraz, competing in his second meeting for Pons Racing after making a mid-season switch from RC Motorsport.

RC's newcomer Paolo Nocera improved on his solid start from Thursday to go sixth fastest in the morning, but the Italian had a troubled afternoon, languishing half a second behind the next slowest car.

"I am enjoying the car," said Nocera, "but we had some bad luck in the afternoon with all of the interruptions. The red flag (when KTR's Siso Cunill stopped out on track) meant I only went out in the final ten minutes, and then there were yellow flags so I couldn't get my tyres and brakes up to temperature."

Silverstone winner Salvador Duran also had mixed fortunes. The Mexican was restricted to just four laps in the morning before gearbox downshift problems on his Interwetten.com car ended his running.

With new tyres available for the afternoon, the Mexican concentrated on working on his qualifying set-up, finishing fourth behind Baguette.