GP2 Series rookies have taken the early bragging rights in the first official outing of the new season, with ART's Sam Bird edging out Arden's Charles Pic to top today's practice session in Barcelona.

Bird's best time of 1m28.511s put him 0.185sec clear of Pic, with Barwa Addax's Sergio Perez ending the morning as the quickest of the more experienced drivers, the Mexican ending up a further 0.1sec behind in third place.

The session passed largely without incident, which allowed virtually all of the field to get some solid running ahead of qualifying this afternoon. The only exception was DAMS driver Jerome d'Ambrosio, whose car stopped after the Belgian had completed just two laps.

Virgin Racing test driver Luiz Razia spun in his Rapax entry with five minutes left on the clock but was able to continue and finished the session in 15th, while Coloni's Alberto Valerio had his morning cut slightly short when he beached his car with a couple of minutes remaining.


Pos  Driver                    Team                        Time      Laps
 1.  Sam Bird                  ART Grand Prix              1:28.511   16
 2.  Charles Pic               Arden International         1:28.696   14
 3.  Sergio Perez              Barwa Addax Team            1:28.795   15
 4.  Jules Bianchi             ART Grand Prix              1:28.846   14
 5.  Oliver Turvey             iSport International        1:28.915   14
 6.  Dani Clos                 Racing Engineering          1:29.078   14
 7.  Davide Valsecchi          iSport International        1:29.104   14
 8.  Giacomo Ricci             DPR                         1:29.163   14
 9.  Josef Kral                Super Nova Racing           1:29.321   12
10.  Ho-Pin Tung               DAMS                        1:29.360   17
11.  Christian Vietoris        Racing Engineering          1:29.508   15
12.  Michael Herck             DPR                         1:29.701   15
13.  Fabio Leimer              Ocean Racing Technology     1:29.760   16
14.  Alberto Valerio           Scuderia Coloni             1:29.764   13
15.  Luiz Razia                Rapax                       1:29.857   11
16.  Marcus Ericsson           Super Nova Racing           1:29.862   16
17.  Giedo van der Garde       Barwa Addax Team            1:29.932   14
18.  Adrian Zaugg              Trident Racing              1:29.967   15
19.  Pastor Maldonado          Rapax                       1:29.998   15
20.  Johnny Cecotto            Trident Racing              1:30.049   16
21.  Max Chilton               Ocean Racing Technology     1:30.226   16
22.  Rodolfo Gonzalez          Arden International         1:30.852   14
23.  Vladimir Arabadzhiev      Scuderia Coloni             1:31.302   15
24.  Jerome d'Ambrosio         DAMS                        1:33.820    2