Pastor Maldonado underlined this morning’s strong performance by Piquet Sports afterdominating today’s qualifying session at the Circuit de Catalunya, claiming tomorrow’s poleposition ahead of Alvaro Parente and teammate Andreas Zuber.
The Colombian driver was fast throughout the thirty minute session, constantly improving on hisown laptimes to finish with a best time of 1:27.547, 0.158 seconds ahead of Parente and a full sixtenths ahead of his third placed teammate.
The session took place under clear blue skies, with the temperature only slightly down from thismorning’s hot free practice session. Right from the start the Piquet pair were swapping fastest lapsas they tried to outdo each other and claim the first pole position of the new season: RomainGrosjean, Luca Filippi and Giorgio Pantano were all in the mix, but comparatively they seemed tobe working much harder to get there.
Nine minutes into the session Sébastien Buemi had a big accident: coming into turn eight at speedhe was caught out by a slower car on the racing line and had to swerve onto the grass inavoidance, which threw his car across the track and backwards into the wall, the Swiss driver just apassenger as all his good work was lost in an instant, with the red flags brought out as he lookedfor a lift back to the pits.
At the restart it was Maldonado who was immediately on the pace, claiming the top spot and theneating away at his own times: despite Zuber’s best intentions there was nothing he could offer inreply to his teammate. Bruno Senna was soon out of the session when his car threw him off at thechicane, while Grosjean stopped as a result of mechanical gremlins not long after, with teammateFilippi following him a few minutes afterwards. Parente saved his best effort for the end, claimingthe front row for his first ever GP2 start in the last minute of the session, while Senna will line upbehind him on the grid in fourth place despite his problems, ahead of Pantano, Adrian Valles,Karun Chandhok and Vitaly Petrov.
Once again the top nine drivers were split by just one second, with a further second covering thegrid down to 21st position. With similarly good weather forecast for tomorrow afternoon’s first raceof the season, the omens are shaping up for an action packed debut for the new GP2-08 car andtheir drivers.
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