GP2 Asia points leader Davide Valsecchi made a strong start to the third weekend of the championship by topping free practice at Sakhir this morning.

The iSport driver claimed first position by 0.022sec over ART's Jules Bianchi, while Valsecchi's teammate and nearest title rival Oliver Turvey was only 0.003sec farther back in third. Both ART cars were in the top five, with Sam Bird fifth behind Meritus' Luca Filippi.

After its shock near-win in Abu Dhabi, DPR maintained its strong form with Giacomo Ricci taking sixth ahead of the DAMS duo, although his teammate Michael Herck was only 16th.

Alvaro Parente was 10th in his first session with Coloni, but fellow returnees Adrian Zaugg (Trident) and Yelmer Buurman (Ocean) were back in 18th and 22nd, respectively. Super Nova's newcomer, American Jake Rosenzweig, started out with 23rd on the time sheets.

GP2 is sharing the Sakhir bill with the V8 Supercar championship this weekend, and is using the traditional track layout rather than the lengthened version that will be adopted for the Bahrain Grand Prix and GP2 Asia finale next month.

Pos  Driver                Team        Time       Gap
 1.  Davide Valsecchi      iSport      1m44.852s
 2.  Jules Bianchi         ART         1m44.874s  + 0.022s
 3.  Oliver Turvey         iSport      1m44.877s  + 0.025s
 4.  Luca Filippi          Meritus     1m45.046s  + 0.194s
 5.  Sam Bird              ART         1m45.229s  + 0.377s
 6.  Giacomo Ricci         DPR         1m45.249s  + 0.397s
 7.  Edoardo Piscopo       DAMS        1m45.324s  + 0.472s
 8.  Christian Vietoris    DAMS        1m45.402s  + 0.550s
 9.  Alexander Rossi       Meritus     1m45.424s  + 0.572s
10.  Alvaro Parente        Coloni      1m45.432s  + 0.580s
11.  Javier Villa          Arden       1m45.460s  + 0.608s
12.  Charles Pic           Arden       1m45.527s  + 0.675s
13.  Sergio Perez          Addax       1m45.547s  + 0.695s
14.  Daniele Zampieri      Rapax       1m45.725s  + 0.873s
15.  Max Chilton           Addax       1m45.785s  + 0.933s
16.  Michael Herck         DPR         1m45.803s  + 0.951s
17.  Will Bratt            Coloni      1m45.852s  + 1.000s
18.  Adrian Zaugg          Trident     1m45.922s  + 1.070s
19.  Josef Kral            Super Nova  1m46.146s  + 1.294s
20   Fabio Leimer          Ocean       1m46.271s  + 1.419s
21.  Vladimir Arabadzhiev  Rapax       1m46.634s  + 1.782s
22.  Yelmer Buurman        Ocean       1m46.726s  + 1.874s
23.  Jake Rosenzweig       Super Nova  1m47.488s  + 2.636s
24.  Plamen Kralev         Trident     1m55.803s  + 10.951s