Pastor Maldonado still leading the way

Pastor Maldonado was again quickest for the second day of GP2 Series collective tests in le Castellet. On a 2A configuration track, the Venezuelan clocked in a best laptime of 1:09.769, one tenth quicker than Dani Clos who led the field most of the day.

The trouble-free morning session started under clear blue skies and saw sophomore Dani Clos at Racing Engineering shine and top the timesheets in a 1:10.288 ahead of yesterday’s quicker man Maldonado while rookies Jules Bianchi and Sam Bird confirmed ART’s good form finishing respectively third and fourth. Christian Vietoris placed the second Racing Engineering car in the Top five, four hundredths faster than Arden’s Charles Pic.

Temperatures dropped slightly at the beginning of the afternoon session. With twenty minutes left on the clock, Maldonado bettered Clos’ morning time by half a second while the Spaniard also improved his personal best, but not enough to claim quickest of the day. They were the only two drivers able to lap the French track in less than 1m10s. Already in the Top ten this morning, Super Nova’s rookie Josef Kral finished with the third best performance of the day ahead of iSport’s Oliver Turvey and GP2 returnee Ho-Pin Tung at Dams. The French squad put both their cars in the top ten along with Rapax, iSport, and ART.

The three-day test session will conclude tomorrow.

Morning times

Afternoon times