José María López has finished the all-important mid-season GP2 series test with the fastest time of the two day session for Super Nova International.
The Argentine, who set his fastest lap in this morning’s session, was followed in the overall times by Nelson Piquet Jr who took his Piquet Sports entry to within five hundredths of a second of Lopez’s time to finish on top of the individual times this afternoon. Third in the classification was Timo Glock.
The German has had something of a resurgence since switching to iSport International, and after finishing yesterday as the quickest driver of all, he continued to show his pace with a best overall lap just one tenth behind Lopez. Championship leader Lewis Hamilton could only muster the 11th fastest time of the test.
The test, which took place on the usual “3D” 3.853km track formation of Circuit Paul Ricard, France, was the first opportunity for our teams to run any serious testing programmes, other than in race weekend practice sessions, since the 2006 season began in April. In 2005, the mid-season test proved to be the turning point of the season for the eventual champions ART Grand Prix and Nico Rosberg, who until that point had not won a race.
The GP2 series now moves on to Magny-Cours in two weeks’ time for Round Seven of the 2006 season. We will know then who has learned the most over the past two days…
Pos - Driver - Team - Time
1 José María López Super Nova International 1:13.728 2 Nelson Piquet Jr Piquet Sports 1:13.774 3 Timo Glock iSport International 1:13.845 4 Andreas Zuber Trident Racing 1:13.892 5 Ernesto Viso iSport International 1:13.967 6 Clivio Piccione DPR Direxiv 1:14.042 7 Gianmaria Bruni Trident Racing 1:14.101 8 Franck Perera DAMS 1:14.110 9 Lucas Di Grassi Durango 1:14.185 10 Adam Carroll Racing Engineering 1:14.279 11 Lewis Hamilton ART Grand Prix 1:14.310 12 Luca Filippi BCN Competicion 1:14.463 13 Giorgio Pantano P.O. FMS International 1:14.519 14 Fairuz Fauzy Super Nova International 1:14.585 15 Alexandre Negrão Piquet Sports 1:14.645 16 Ferdinando Monfardini DAMS 1:14.671 17 Adrian Valles Campos Racing 1:14.674 18 Michael Ammermüller Arden International 1:14.749 19 Sergio Hernandez Durango 1:14.899 20 Alexandre Prémat ART Grand Prix 1:14.938 21 Felix Porteiro Campos Racing 1:14.951 22 Alvaro Parente Arden International 1:15.005 23 Javier Villa Racing Engineering 1:15.006 24 Hiroki Yoshimoto BCN Competicion 1:15.029 25 Olivier Pla DPR Direxiv 1:15.281 26 Jason Tahinci P.O. FMS International 1:15.907
