RUSSIAN TIME’s Sam Bird has scored his maiden GP2 pole for the feature race at Spa-Francorchamps.
His lap time of 1:56.957 was set in the first ten minutes of the session and was to be unbeatable but Fabio Leimer came close with a time of 1:57.156 being good enough for the front row.
With the session being held under uncharacteristically blue skies deep in the Belgian hills, all 26 cars decided on the soft Pirelli tyres to go out with on their GP2 machines.
One of the bigger winners in the beginning was ART Grand Prix driver James Calado – having knocked Leimer off the top spot early on, Calado couldn’t improve any further and will instead start third place just ahead of Marcus Ericsson for DAMS.
Following on behind following a pit stop for fresh rubber, included EQ8 Caterham racer Alexander Rossi who edged out Nathanaël Berthon by one hundredth of a second to claim fifth, Jolyon Palmer gained a respectable seventh while Stéphane Richelmi rounded out the top eight.
Sergio Canamasas will feel very hard done by following GP2 qualifying – having gained ninth place on the road, he will lose ten positions following a penalty from the last round in Hungary meaning he now starts 19th and promoted Felipe Nasr as well as Robin Frijns into the top ten.
The GP2 Feature race takes place tomorrow at 14.40 with every lap live on Sky Sports F1 HD in the UK.