Pastor Maldonado tops Barcelona tests

The GP2 Series paddock gathered this week for the last three-day pre-season test session in Barcelona. And once again, it was Pastor Maldonado who set the pace at the end of the day in a 1:27.457, but rookies did not falter with four of them finishing in the Top 5, ART’s Sam Bird leading Racing Engineering’s Christian Vietoris, Arden’s Charles Pic and Super Nova’s Ericsson.

This morning, the track activity was pretty slow for most of the first two hours, with Ocean’s Max Chilton and Vietoris successively topping the timing sheet. In the last sixty minutes of the three-hour session, the German’s best laptime was bettered by Addax’ Giedo van der Garde who would then stay on top until the chequered flag. He was closely followed by Bird while the Brit’s teammate Jules Bianchi moved up to P4 ahead of Pic. The session was red flagged once after Ho-Pin Tung at Dams touched the barriers at Turn 5. At the restart, Maldonado improved to claim the fourth best laptime. Behind the Top 5, Jérôme d’Ambrosio placed his Dams car in sixth place ahead of iSport’s Oliver Turvey, Pic, Trident’s Adrian Zaugg and Josef Kral at Super Nova.

After the lunch break, Bianchi took charge and rapidly topped the timing sheet with teammate Bird in tow. Soon enough, it was d’Ambrosio’s turn to shine until Maldonado moved up to P1. With the arrival of light rain, Bird claimed top spot ahead of Bianchi, Kral and Dani Clos. But the raindrops soon vanished and Davide Valsecchi moved up to P4 while Ericsson clocked in the second best laptime. With fifteen minutes left on the clock, Maldonado climbed back to the top of the timesheet ahead of Bird and Vietoris. Pic swooped in fourth with Ericsson in tow. Bianchi was the fifth rookie to follow while Michael Herck climbed to P7 ahead of Valsecchi, Luiz Razia, and Kral.

The session will start again tomorrow at 9am, local time.