The weather for the 30 minute Free Practice session, held in the morning, was cool with a track temperature of just 19 deg and overnight rain had left the circuit damp and slippery in places. Both Racing Engineering cars took to the track as the session began and Julian Leal was the first to register a quick time when he set a lap of 2:01.286s to go 3rd and he was quickly followed by Fabio Leimer who set a 2:00.258s lap to take over Julian’s place.
Lap times continued to fall as the track dried out and with 16 minutes of the session remaining Julian moved up to second with a time of 1:59.168s and two minutes later Fabio went to the top of the timing sheets, nearly half a second faster than anybody had achieved so far, with a lap of 1:58.581s. With both drivers concentrating on setting up their cars for Qualifying neither man improved on their times in the remaining laps leaving Fabio 3rd and Julian 9th at the end of the 30 minutes.
The track temperature had substantially increased to 34° by the time the afternoon qualifying got underway and all the GP2 cars were out on track as soon as the 30 minutes session began. Fabio was immediately on the pace and with eight minutes gone the Racing Engineering driver jumped to the top of the times with a 1:57.255s on his first flying lap and Julian was right behind him in 9th with a time of 1:57.924.
All the cars returned to the pits after about 12 minutes of the session to fine tune the set ups of their cars and with eight minutes left the Racing Engineering cars were back on the track but the car of Quaife-Hobbs was moving slowly around the track with a loose front wheel preventing any quick laps until it returned to the pits. Fabio improved his time on his first flying lap with a time of 1:57.156s to lie 2nd just 0.2 seconds away from pole position. However Julian was unable to improve on his earlier time leaving him in 12th but a 10 grid penalty given to Canamasas in Hungary will promote the young Colombian to 11th.
The 25 lap Feature race will see Fabio, starting from the front row, having an excellent chance of winning the race and closing the gap to the two drivers ahead of him in the Championship as Coletti and Nasr only qualified 20th and 10th respectively. For Julián it will be a case looking to move up into a points scoring position and maximise his grid position for Sunday’s Sprint race.
Timetable:Race 1: Sat 24 Aug 2013, 15:40 (GMT+2)Race 2: Sun 25 Aug 2013, 10:35 (GMT+2)
