Romain Grosjean opened this weekend's GP2 Series round at Silverstone with the fastest lap in free practice.

The Barwa Addax driver went to the top of the timesheets halfway through the 30-minute session with a 1m26.808s, and the time was good enough to stand until a red flag brought running to an end a couple of minutes ahead of schedule.

Andreas Zuber was second fastest for FMSI, his best lap just over 0.2 second shy of Grosjean's, with ORT's Karun Chandhok third.

A combination of incidents and technical problems mean that several drivers will go into qualifying with less track time than they might have liked, including both of ART's drivers after Nico Hulkenberg failed to complete a timed lap and Pastor Maldonado backed his car into the barriers at Copse.

Super Nova's Javier Villa was sidelined with what appeared to be an engine failure with 10 minutes remaining, and Arden rookie Sergio Perez spun in the closing minutes.