Grosjean takes pole for GP2 opener

The Barwa Addax driver struck early with his 1m27.510s effort, and the time stood for the remainder of the session.

For several minutes the former Campos team appeared on its way for a one-two before Racing Engineering's Lucas di Grassi was able to find a clear lap on his second run to put him second on the grid, squeezing out Vitaly Petrov.

"The problem is the traffic," said di Grassi. "I don't know if we have slower rookies this year or what, but it could be a big problem. There could be races where you don't get a clear lap and qualify 16th even though you did nothing wrong. But otherwise, everything feels pretty good, so I think we're looking okay for tomorrow."

Nico Hulkenberg will begin his first GP2 main series race from fourth, the ART rookie lining up alongside FMS driver Andi Zuber.

Super Nova's Luca Filippi was sixth on the timesheets but will drop to ninth on the grid due to his three-place penalty for failing to slow for yellow flags during practice earlier in the day, moving Jerome D'Ambrosio up to sixth alongside Diego Nunes.

The only major casualty came in the final minutes of the session when the Arden car of Sergio Perez swapped ends and pitched itself into the tyre barriers.

Pos Driver                    Team                  Time          Gap
 1. Romain Grosjean           Barwa                 1m27.510s
 2. Lucas di Grassi           Racing Engineering    1m27.531s  +0.021
 3. Vitaly Petrov             Barwa                 1m28.027s  +0.517
 4. Nico Hulkenberg           ART                   1m28.088s  +0.578
 5. Andi Zuber                FMS                   1m28.090s  +0.580
 6. Jerome D'Ambrosio         DAMS                  1m28.209s  +0.699
 7. Diego Nunes               iSport                1m28.253s  +0.743
 8. Roldan Rodriguez          Piquet                1m28.266s  +0.756
 9. Luca Filippi              Super Nova            1m28.195s  +0.685
10. Pastor Maldonado          ART                   1m28.283s  +0.773
11. Sergio Perez              Arden                 1m28.374s  +0.864
12. Edoardo Mortara           Arden                 1m28.451s  +0.941
13. Karun Chandhok            Ocean                 1m28.488s  +0.978
14. Alvaro Parente            Ocean                 1m28.608s  +1.098
15. Javier Villa              Super Nova            1m28.381s  +0.871
16. Alberto Valerio           Piquet                1m28.688s  +1.178
17. Dani Clos                 Racing Engineering    1m28.691s  +1.181
18. Giedo van der Garde       iSport                1m28.796s  +1.286
19. Davide Rigon              Trident               1m28.872s  +1.362
20. Davide Valsecchi          Durango               1m29.164s  +1.654
21. Luiz Razia                FMS                   1m29.185s  +1.675
22. Kamui Kobayashi           DAMS                  1m29.350s  +1.840
23. Giacomo Ricci             DPR                   1m29.524s  +2.014
24. Nelson Panciatici         Durango               1m29.560s  +2.050
25. Ricardo Teixeira          Trident               1m31.115s  +3.605
26. Michael Herck             DPR                   1m31.875s  +4.365