De Marco quickest on home soil
Home driver Nicola de Marco pinched the fastest time right at the end of today's second Formula 2 free practice session at Imola
The 19-year-old, who hails from Pordenone in northern Italy, set the session's best time in the final two minutes - though it was more than three tenths shy of Julien Jousse's time from the day's earlier practice.
Lithuanian Kazim Vasiliauskas had looked likely to top this afternoon's session after rising to the top of the timesheet half way through. But de Marco's late effort was just in time, before Jousse went off at Acque Minerale and - stuck in the gravel - forced an end to the session one minute before time.
Vasiliauskas's time remained good enough for second place, while Milos Pavlovic jumped up to third just seconds after de Marco had set his benchmark time.
Title rivals Mikhail Aleshin and Andy Soucek set the fourth and fifth best times, with Philipp Eng sixth. The other title hopefuls, Julien Jousse and Robert Wickens were 10th and 12th quickest respectively.
The top three drivers in the session were separated by less than one tenth of a second, with just half a second covering the top 10.
Earlier offs for Germans Tobias Hegewald and Jens Hoing at Tamburello had brought out yellow flags in the first sector, while the only stoppage of the session came just three minutes in when Armaan Ebrahim spun off at Rivazza.
Pos Driver Time Gap 1. Nicola de Marco 1m39.800s 2. Kazim Vasiliauskas 1m39.841s +0.041 3. Milos Pavlovic 1m39.890s +0.090 4. Mikhail Aleshin 1m39.952s +0.152 5. Andy Soucek 1m40.029s +0.229 6. Philipp Eng 1m40.077s +0.277 7. German Sanchez 1m40.088s +0.288 8. Edoardo Piscopo 1m40.112s +0.312 9. Mirko Bortolotti 1m40.257s +0.457 10. Julien Jousse 1m40.307s +0.507 11. Carlos Iaconelli 1m40.414s +0.614 12. Robert Wickens 1m40.466s +0.666 13. Tobias Hegewald 1m40.538s +0.738 14. Tom Gladdis 1m40.562s +0.762 15. Jack Clarke 1m40.706s +0.906 16. Sebastian Hohenthal 1m40.791s +0.991 17. Natacha Gachnang 1m41.328s +1.528 18. Henri Karjalainen 1m41.620s +1.820 19. Armaan Ebrahim 1m41.637s +1.837 20. Alex Brundle 1m41.873s +2.073 21. Jolyon Palmer 1m42.132s +2.332 22. Jason Moore 1m42.600s +2.800 23. Pietro Gandolfi 1m42.604s +2.804 24. Ollie Hancock 1m42.695s +2.895 25. Jens Hoing 1m43.808s +4.008
Be part of the Autosport community
Join the conversationShare Or Save This Story
Subscribe and access Autosport.com with your ad-blocker.
From Formula 1 to MotoGP we report straight from the paddock because we love our sport, just like you. In order to keep delivering our expert journalism, our website uses advertising. Still, we want to give you the opportunity to enjoy an ad-free and tracker-free website and to continue using your adblocker.
Top Comments