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Charles Pic beats Luca Filippi to GP2 pole at the Nurburgring

Charles Pic came out on top of a three-way fight to take pole position for the first GP2 race of the weekend at the Nurburgring

The Addax driver, who moved to the top of the times with just four minutes remaining, robbed series veteran Luca Filippi of the top spot for his 100th start in the main series.

But Filippi, who waited longer than the rest of his rivals before emerging from the pits on his second set of tyres five minutes from the end, attacked with a faster lap in the final minute. The Italian managed to improve his time, but not his position and will start second in his first race back at Coloni.

Pic could be forgiven for feeling a slight sense of justice though, as two of his impressive-looking laps in the early stages of qualifying were ruined by traffic in the final sector.

Behind them, Romain Grosjean (DAMS) had to settle for third after a sequence of laps where he was clearly on the ragged edge more than usual. He will share the second row with countryman Jules Bianchi, although the ART driver was more than three tenths adrift of the top three.

Giedo van der Garde bounced back from a free practice session curtailed by throttle problems to put the second Addax car in the top five, just fractions ahead of Fabio Leimer, Alvaro Parente and Esteban Gutierrez.

Marcus Ericsson and Luiz Razia completed the top 10, followed by title contender Sam Bird, who had to settle for 11th.

The Briton had a disrupted session, as he had hot laps ruined either by traffic or small errors of his own which prevented him from stringing together the sort of lap time his best sectors suggested he was capable of. Michael Herck was deemed to have impeded the iSport driver and was subsequently handed a three-place grid penalty.

Pos  Driver               Team                Time       Gap
 1.  Charles Pic          Addax               1m40.317s
 2.  Luca Filippi         Coloni              1m40.393s  + 0.076s
 3.  Romain Grosjean      DAMS                1m40.431s  + 0.114s
 4.  Jules Bianchi        ART                 1m40.755s  + 0.438s
 5.  Giedo van der Garde  Addax               1m40.781s  + 0.464s
 6.  Fabio Leimer         Rapax               1m40.794s  + 0.477s
 7.  Alvaro Parente       Carlin              1m40.803s  + 0.486s
 8.  Esteban Gutierrez    ART                 1m40.817s  + 0.500s
 9.  Marcus Ericsson      iSport              1m40.859s  + 0.542s
10.  Luiz Razia           AirAsia             1m40.968s  + 0.651s
11.  Sam Bird             iSport              1m40.970s  + 0.653s
12.  Dani Clos            Racing Engineering  1m40.998s  + 0.681s
13.  Christian Vietoris   Racing Engineering  1m41.101s  + 0.784s
14.  Adam Carroll         Super Nova          1m41.141s  + 0.824s
15.  Stefano Coletti      Trident             1m41.166s  + 0.849s
16.  Michael Herck        Coloni              1m41.059s  + 0.742s*
17.  Kevin Mirocha        Ocean               1m41.268s  + 0.951s
18.  Davide Valsecchi     AirAsia             1m41.354s  + 1.037s
19.  Josef Kral           Arden               1m41.356s  + 1.039s
20.  Rodolfo Gonzalez     Trident             1m41.489s  + 1.172s
21.  Johnny Cecotto       Ocean               1m41.489s  + 1.172s
22.  Jolyon Palmer        Arden               1m41.594s  + 1.277s
23.  Pal Varhaug          DAMS                1m41.633s  + 1.316s
24.  Julian Leal          Rapax               1m41.894s  + 1.577s
25.  Fairuz Fauzy         Super Nova          1m41.966s  + 1.649s
26.  Max Chilton          Carlin              1m42.783s  + 2.466s

* Three-place penalty

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