Kovalainen Quickest in Practice

With just thirty minutes of practice the teams wasted little time getting the cars on track, and Campos driver Juan Cruz Alvarez was the man to lead the others onto the track for the first time.

Coloni drivers Gianmaria Bruni and Mathias Lauda lived up to team boss Paolo Coloni's instructions of being fastest from the first lap, with the pair tiptoeing through early yellow flags and split by just 0.016 as Giorgio Pantano and Nico Rosberg were waylaid with electrical problems.

They were not alone ­ electrical issues struck a number of drivers early in the session, and six drivers were unable to set times in the session. With a lot of the drivers being new to the track there were also bound to be off circuit adventures for some, and so it proved as Clivio Piccione ran off track early.

At the halfway mark of the session Ernesto Viso topped the times by just 0.005 seconds from Alvarez, but fast laps from Kovalainen and Carroll started the times tumbling.

ART's Alexandre Premat had a worrying moment through the chicane when he bounced off the curbs and just managed to hold the car, necessitating a return to the pits for some work on the car as Scott Speed's car was pushed off track by the marshalls, having stopped with a problem and deserted his car.

The final chicane caught out a number of drivers, with Yoshimoto and Can Artam missing their braking points there in the final moments, but as Alvarez stopped on track late in the session with another electrical issue Kovalainen had done enough to claim the fastest lap in his first GP2 race session.

Pos Driver Team Time Gap Laps 1. H. Kovalainen Arden International 1:35.344 9 2. H. Yoshimoto BCN Competicion 1:35.532 0.188 11 3. A. Carroll Super Nova 1:35.605 0.261 14 4. E. Viso BCN Competicion 1:35.676 0.332 12 5. G. Bruni Coloni Motorsport 1:35.706 0.362 13 6. F. Monfardini Durango 1:36.585 1.241 14 7. A. Premat ART Grand Prix 1:37.007 1.663 8 8. A. Negrao Hitech Piquet Sports 1:37.308 1.964 16 9. J. Alvarez Campos Racing 1:37.631 2.287 10 10. C. Artam iSport International 1:37.876 2.532 11 11. N. Jani Racing Engineering 1:37.970 2.626 8 12. M. Lauda Coloni Motorsport 1:38.082 2.738 13 13. S. Speed iSport International 1:38.739 3.395 5 14. S. Hernandez Campos Racing 1:39.319 3.975 9 15. N. Piquet Jr. Hitech Piquet Sports 1:42.001 6.657 5 16. N. Lapierre Arden International 1:51.199 15.855 3 17. C. Piccione Durango 1:52.353 17.009 2 18. G. Pantano Super Nova 1:57.446 22.102 2 19. F. Fauzy DAMS No time 1 20. J. Lopez DAMS No time 1 21. O. Pla DPR No time 0 22. R. Sharp DPR No time 0 23. B. Garcia Racing Engineering No time 0 24. N. Rosberg ART Grand Prix No time 0 
 




All Timing Unofficial