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

Racing Engineering lead the way with a 1-2 in free practice

By Franck Drui

17 April 2015 - 12:10
Sakhir, Free practice: King sets (...)

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.

PosDriverTeamTimeLaps
1. Jordan King Racing Engineering 1:42.441 17
2. Alexander Rossi Racing Engineering 1:42.451 20
3. Alex Lynn DAMS 1:42.509 18
4. Stoffel Vandoorne ART Grand Prix 1:42.612 14
5. Arthur Pic Campos Racing 1:42.948 16
6. Rio Haryanto Campos Racing 1:43.043 16
7. Pierre Gasly DAMS 1:43.249 18
8. Mitch Evans RUSSIAN TIME 1:43.327 16
9. Raffaele Marciello Trident 1:43.400 16
10. Nobuharu Matsushita ART Grand Prix 1:43.422 18
11. Artem Markelov RUSSIAN TIME 1:43.457 18
12. Julian Leal Carlin 1:43.581 12
13. Sergey Sirotkin Rapax 1:43.581 12
14. Norman Nato Arden International 1:43.762 14
15. Marco Sorensen Carlin 1:43.774 16
16. Robert Visoiu Rapax 1:43.810 13
17. Richie Stanaway Status Grand Prix 1:43.814 16
18. Sergio Canamasas MP Motorsport 1:43.948 14
19. Nathanaël Berton Lazarus 1:44.178 14
20. Rene Binder Trident 1:44.233 18
21. Marlon Stockinger Status Grand Prix 1:44.515 12
22. Daniel De Jong MP Motorsport 1:44.517 15
23. André Negrao Arden International 1:44.529 14
24. Zoel Amberg Lazarus 1:51.825 5

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