Sakhir, Free practice: King sets the pace at Bahrain International Circuit

The eleventh season of the GP2 Series kicked off today at Bahrain International Circuit with rookie Jordan King setting the pace with a laptime of 1:42.441, a mere 0.01s seconds quicker than his teammate Alexander Rossi.

The trouble-free session opened in scorching temperatures of thirty-five degrees. The DAMS duo were the first to feed onto the track with the rest of the field in tow and on Medium Pirelli tyres. Rossi set the early pace clocking in a laptime time 0.058s better than reigning GP3 Champion Alex Lynn’s in P2. Twelve minutes into the session, King lapped the Bahraini track one hundredth quicker than the American and until the end of the session, no one would better it.

The clock continued to tick down and with seven minutes left, Stoffel Vandoorne stopped at Turn 3 with mechanical gremlins. The first sector was flagged with double yellows and when the track was clear again, no one improved.

At the chequered flag, King led Rossi and Lynn. Vandoorne finished the session in fourth place ahead of Arthur Pic, Rio Haryanto, Pierre Gasly, Mitch Evans, Raffaele Marciello and Nobuharu Matsushita.

The teams will now have time to collect the data and work on the perfect set-up for tonight’s qualifying session which will take place at 20.00 (local time) in cooler temperatures and with soft compounds at everyone’s disposal.