Lucas di Grassi set an encouraging fastest time in practice for this weekend's GP2 Series round at the Hungaroring today.

The Racing Engineering driver, who is bidding to keep his title bid on track this weekend, established himself at the top of the time sheets from the outset and never looked vaguely threatened. His best time of 1m28.261s put him 0.422sec clear of closest rival Vitaly Petrov (Addax), who spun into the gravel shortly after setting his best lap and lost the chance to improve further.

It was a quiet start for the two main championship contenders, with Addax's Romain Grosjean finishing the morning in fourth place behind Super Nova driver Javier Villa, and Germany winner Nico Hulkenberg stranded back in 10th for ART.

Elsewhere, Adam Carroll returned to make a cameo in the iSport garage as a driver coach for Giedo van der Garde, but his charge lost the first part of the session having a mechanical problem dealt with in the pitlane.

It was a similarly frustrating start to the weekend for Ocean, with Karun Chandhok and Alvaro Parente pulling off the circuit and abandoning their cars almost simultaneously.