Posted on 4th July 2014
Sunny skies over Silverstone in the county of Northamptonshire greeted the teams and drivers for GP2 Practice.
Simon Trummer was the first driver out onto the historic circuit with Johnny Cecotto and Adrian Quaife-Hobbs just behind. The first laps set by those three drivers as well as the 23 others were floating around the two minute mark before they all pushed their machines a bit harder to find the limits. Daniel Abt in the Hilmer Motorsport car set the first benchmark of 1:42.682.
Jolyon Palmer looked very uncomfortable in Practice going off the circuit at Chapel, Abbey and later on Club corner. Alexander Rossi took a leaf out of Palmer's book and lost control of his Caterham Racing car on the entrance to Chapel but escaped unscathed. As Palmer and Rossi were running ragged, Raffaele Marciello banked the fastest first sector just as he went fastest overall with a time of 1:41.322.
The minutes ticked by and at the halfway point the track was relatively quiet. In his first ever GP2 session, rookie Marco Sørensen was holding on to P18 ahead of Quaife-Hobbs and Jon Lancaster; both established race winners in the Series. Sørensen's team mate Daniël de Jong was making waves inside the top ten, just half a second off the ultimate pace.
As the checkered flag fell, Felipe Nasr slowed to halt on the Hangar Straight; he ended the session in sixth place.
The final standings were stopped by Marciello with a lap time of 1:41.127 ahead of his team mate Stefano Coletti and Alexander Rossi. Jolyon Palmer was the highest placed driver on home soil in fourth, just ahead of Johnny Cecotto who rounded out the top five.
Position Driver Team Gap
1 R. Marciello Racing Engineering 1:41.127
2 S. Coletti Racing Engineering 0.134
3 A. Rossi EQ8 Caterham Racing 0.147
4 J. Palmer DAMS 0.277
5 J. Cecotto Trident 0.321
6 F. Nasr Carlin 0.326
7 S. Richelmi DAMS 0.353
8 S. Vandoorne ART Grand Prix 0.541
9 D. De Jong MP Motorsport 0.602
10 M. Evans RT RUSSIAN TIME 0.610
11 J. Leal Carlin 0.620
12 S. Canamasas Trident 0.765
13 R. Haryanto EQ8 Caterham Racing 0.769
14 S. Trummer Rapax 0.914
15 C. Daly Venezuela GP Lazarus 1.018
16 D. Abt Hilmer Motorsport 1.024
17 A. Negrão Arden International 1.026
18 N. Berthon Venezuela GP Lazarus 1.034
19 M. Sørensen MP Motorsport 1.082
20 A. Quaife-Hobbs Rapax 1.172
21 A. Pic Campos Racing 1.347
22 A. Markelov RT RUSSIAN TIME 1.548
23 K. Sato Campos Racing 1.699
24 T. Izawa ART Grand Prix 1.814
25 J. Lancaster Hilmer Motorsport 2.053
26 R. Binder Arden International 2.189
Callum Rowe
