Pastor Maldonado topped today's opening GP2 Series practice session at Silverstone. The current series leader set his benchmark lap of 1m40.393s on his first set of tires and the time remained out of reach for the rest of the field, with Addax's Giedo van der Garde coming closest by finishing 0.129sec short of the Venezuelan.
DAMS' Jerome d'Ambrosio was third quickest ahead of Sergio Perez (Addax). Luca Filippi, who returns to the series this weekend as replacement for the injured Josef Kral at Super Nova, finished up 13th.
Virtually everyone did their best times on their first set of tires, with opportunities to improve in the latter part of the session being thwarted by a flurry of yellow flags. Most were for harmless spins, although Ocean's Fabio Leimer's run was brought to an early end by an engine failure five minutes before the session concluded.
A similar problem prevented Arden's Charles Pic from completing more than three laps, while initial pacesetter Luiz Razia was also an early spectator after his Rapax car came to a stop 10 minutes in.