Jérôme d’Ambrosio finally did what no-one else has so far been able to do in GP2 testing by knocking Pastor Maldonado off the top of the timesheets.
The morning session of the second day at Barcelona was disrupted by no fewer than seven red flags caused by spins and other incidents, but the Belgian picked his way through the chaos to set a time that survived the much cleaner afternoon session.
Driving for the Renault-branded DAMS team, he set a best time during his 12 laps of 1min 27.182, eight tenths fastest than second-placed Christian Vietoris for Racing Engineering.
Inevitably, Maldonado was next for Rapax, and the Venezuelan was also fastest in the afternoon – although his best time in that session of 1min 27.539 would only have tied him in sixth place with Sam Bird if it had been set in the morning.
Morning session spinners and crashers included Jules Bianchi, Adrian Zaugg, Vladimir Arabadzhiev, Dani Clos, Rodolfo Gonzalez, Giacomo Ricci and Max Chilton, who also set the slowest time. Oliver Turvey was 12th as the GP2 Asia champions iSport failed to shine in the different machinery used by the GP2 main series.
In the afternoon d’Ambrosio was second-fastest, ahead of Fabio Leimer, Sergio Perez and Vietoris. Turvey was 10th, Chilton 20th and Bird 21st as the ART Grand Prix cars made an uncharacteristic excursion to the wrong end of the timehseet – Jules Bianchi was slowest of all.
The test concludes tomorrow. For full timings see the series website here.