Grosjean fastest in practice

The championship leader was the first driver to set a genuine lap time six minutes into the session, and his best effort of 1m30.559s was never headed. In fact, none of the Frenchman's rivals could even get within half a second of his time.

All of the quick times were set shortly after Grosjean made his mark, with Davide Valsecchi (AirAsia) and Jules Bianchi (ART) leading the chase. But the session came to a quiet end, as nobody in the top 10 improved in the final 15 minutes.

Addax's Giedo van der Garde overcame a very public on-track row with Rodolfo Gonzalez to set the fourth fastest time, while Luca Filippi completed the top five for Super Nova.

Charles Pic made sure Addax had two cars in the top six, ahead of Fabio Leimer (Rapax) and Grosjean's DAMS team-mate Pal Varhaug.

Sam Bird, who shares the championship lead with Grosjean coming into this weekend, did not hit the same heights as his rival and was only 24th. The iSport driver completed plenty of laps, unlike the two Arden cars that also finished the session near the back, but he could not improve on a best lap that was 2.9 seconds adrift.

Pos  Driver               Team                Time       Gap
 1.  Romain Grosjean      DAMS                1m30.559s
 2.  Davide Valsecchi     AirAsia             1m31.081s  + 0.522s
 3.  Jules Bianchi        ART                 1m31.214s  + 0.655s
 4.  Giedo van der Garde  Addax               1m31.237s  + 0.678s
 5.  Luca Filippi         Super Nova          1m31.265s  + 0.706s
 6.  Charles Pic          Addax               1m31.410s  + 0.851s
 7.  Fabio Leimer         Rapax               1m31.507s  + 0.948s
 8.  Pal Varhaug          DAMS                1m31.536s  + 0.977s
 9.  Dani Clos            Racing Engineering  1m31.656s  + 1.097s
10.  Luiz Razia           AirAsia             1m31.672s  + 1.113s
11.  Marcus Ericsson      iSport              1m31.834s  + 1.275s
12.  Max Chilton          Carlin              1m31.840s  + 1.281s
13.  Stefano Coletti      Trident             1m31.889s  + 1.330s
14.  Alvaro Parente       Racing Engineering  1m31.930s  + 1.371s
15.  Fairuz Fauzy         Super Nova          1m31.982s  + 1.423s
16.  Esteban Gutierrez    ART                 1m32.031s  + 1.472s
17.  Michael Herck        Coloni              1m32.040s  + 1.481s
18.  Johnny Cecotto       Ocean               1m32.073s  + 1.514s
19.  Julian Leal          Rapax               1m32.144s  + 1.585s
20.  Kevin Mirocha        Ocean               1m32.201s  + 1.642s
21.  Mikhail Aleshin      Carlin              1m32.211s  + 1.652s
22.  Josef Kral           Arden               1m32.499s  + 1.940s
23.  Rodolfo Gonzalez     Trident             1m32.778s  + 2.219s
24.  Sam Bird             iSport              1m33.491s  + 2.932s
25.  Kevin Ceccon         Coloni              1m33.274s  + 2.715s
26.  Jolyon Palmer        Arden