Rosberg Fastest in Practice

The drivers were greeted with dark and ominous looking clouds across the region as they arrived at the track, but the sun started to peek through as the cars took to the dry track.

Local knowledge helped Nicolas Lapierre set the early pace - the Frenchman grew up near the track and clearly knew the fastest line around his home track - before teammate Heikki Kovalainen claimed the top spot from him with a time of 1:27.311.

Rosberg set his fastest lap 18 minutes into a session which suffered from few incidents - Ryan Sharp stopped on track after a spin, with Hiroki Yoshimoto also stopping on track and Ferdinando Monfardini needing a push from the marshalls to get back to the pits.

As ever, grid is remarkably close - the top ten drivers are split by just one second, with two seconds covering the first eighteen drivers - setting up a promising battle for this afternoon's qualifying session.

Pos  Driver      Team                      Time             Laps
 1.  Rosberg     ART Grand Prix            1:27.154          12
 2.  Kovalainen  Arden International       1:27.311 + 0.157  15
 3.  Speed       iSport International      1:27.520 + 0.366  12
 4.  Pantano     Super Nova International  1:27.623 + 0.469  10
 5.  Lapierre    Arden International       1:27.876 + 0.722  14
 6.  Premat      ART Grand Prix            1:27.923 + 0.769  13
 7.  Pla         DPR                       1:28.048 + 0.894  13
 8.  Lopez       DAMS                      1:28.072 + 0.918  14
 9.  Bruni       Coloni Motorsport         1:28.123 + 0.969   9
10.  Piquet Jr.  Hitech Piquet Sports      1:28.253 + 1.099  18
11.  Yoshimoto   BCN Competicion           1:28.274 + 1.120  11
12.  Carroll     Super Nova International  1:28.414 + 1.260  15
13.  Viso        BCN Competicion           1:28.444 + 1.290  15
14.  Garcia      Racing Engineering        1:28.486 + 1.332  15
15.  Jani        Racing Engineering        1:28.491 + 1.337  15
16.  Fauzy       DAMS                      1:28.920 + 1.766  17
17.  Monfardini  Durango                   1:29.004 + 1.850  11
18.  Piccione    Durango                   1:29.063 + 1.909  15
19.  Alvarez     Campos Racing             1:29.373 + 2.219  11
20.  Lauda       Coloni Motorsport         1:29.655 + 2.501  16
21.  Artam       iSport International      1:29.771 + 2.617  15
22.  Negrao      Hitech Piquet Sports      1:29.838 + 2.684  14
23.  Hernandez   Campos Racing             1:30.003 + 2.849  16
24.  Sharp       DPR                       1:30.364 + 3.210   7