Davide Valsecchi once again put in a blinding last lap to take top spot in a session – it was free practise yesterday, this time he stole pole away from Pastor Maldonado and Oliver Turvey.
After the first round of qualifying laps Maldonado looked to have everything under control by setting a 1:34.875 with under 10 minutes left in the session, but his final crack at pole fell short, and simply had to wait for everyone else to post new times.
Turvey looked like he was struggling to make the Top 10 for much of the session, after rather worryingly suffering a sticking throttle but suddenly jumped up to third with only seconds to spare, with 3rd all the way down to 15th only covered by 7 tenths of a second.
“Today was perfect, the car was incredibly fast,” said an elated Valsecchi. “The engineers did a good job because between the first and second run they made the car quick enough for pole. It was really good in the last few minutes of qualifying.”
Qualifying Results
Pos Driver Team Time Gap 1. Davide Valsecchi iSport 1m34.860s 2. Pastor Maldonado Rapax 1m34.875s + 0.015s 3. Oliver Turvey iSport 1m35.135s + 0.275s 4. Sergio Perez Barwa Addax 1m35.194s + 0.334s 5. Sam Bird ART 1m35.267s + 0.407s 6. Giedo van der Garde Barwa Addax 1m35.348s + 0.488s 7. Dani Clos Racing Engineering 1m35.364s + 0.504s 8. Charles Pic Arden 1m35.411s + 0.551s 9. Alberto Valerio Coloni 1m35.491s + 0.631s 10. Luiz Razia Rapax 1m35.527s + 0.667s 11. Christian Vietoris Racing Engineering 1m35.664s + 0.804s 12. Jules Bianchi ART 1m35.676s + 0.816s 13. Giacomo Ricci DPR 1m35.750s + 0.890s 14. Michael Herck DPR 1m35.762s + 0.902s 15. Max Chilton Ocean 1m35.842s + 0.982s 16. Jerome D'Ambrosio DAMS 1m35.926s + 1.066s 17. Josef Kral Super Nova 1m35.955s + 1.095s 18. Adrian Zaugg Trident 1m35.957s + 1.097s 19. Marcus Ericsson Super Nova 1m35.973s + 1.113s 20. Johnny Cecotto Trident 1m36.047s + 1.187s 21. Fabio Leimer Ocean 1m36.167s + 1.307s 22. Vlado Arabadjiev Coloni 1m36.564s + 1.704s 23. Rodolfo Gonzalez Arden 1m36.628s + 1.768s 24. Ho-Pin Tung DAMS 1m36.663s + 1.803s
