The first practice session of the 18th Mobil 1 Supercup season got underway today with a usual suspect topping the times.
Jeroen Bleekemolen lead the way with a 2m31.600, just 0.056 seconds quicker than British driver Nick Tandy. Bleekemolen was happy with his performance and only used one set of new tyres on his way to the top of the time sheet. Despite taking the fastest time of the day the Dutch driver admitted that he made a couple of mistakes on his quick lap.
Nick Tandy was happy with his performance for Konrad racing at a track that was brand new to him but used more track that he should have done on a number of occasions “I hope it doesn't happen to me tomorrow, because it will cause a penalty” he said.
Stefan Rosina will be looking to repeat his performance of today in qualifying tomorrow after finishing in third place. The Slovakian said he has some ideas on how to close the gap on the fastest time and revealed he was looking forward to getting out on track tomorrow after a lot more rubber had been laid down.
2009 runner-up René Rast settled for fourth fastest, a second down from his team-mate's time that topped the tables. Rast revealed that he had been working on his race set-up and couldn't get in a quick lap on his fresh set of tyres.
Sascha Maassen rounded out the top five on his return to the series ahead of a very strong performance from rookie Kuba Giermaziak which saw the VERVA Racing driver finish the session in an impressive sixth place.
Former champion Patrick Huisman set seventh fastest time ahead of team-mate Siso Cunill, Sean Edwards and Jan Seyffarth.
There was celebration for local Abdulaziz Al Faisal as he finished in eleventh after holding sixth place for some time.
Reigning Porsche Carrera Cup GB Champion Tim Bridgman finished his first practice session of 2010 down in twentieth place, two places behind team-mate Niall Breen.
Qualifying takes place tomorrow between 9:15am and 9:45am local time with the quickest lap from each driver deciding the starting position for the first race and the second fastest lap deciding the position for race two.