Carlo van Dam has made his first outing in a GP2 car as a reward for his success in the ATS Formula 3 Championship.

Driving for the Spanish BCN team, van Dam posted a best time of 1m 14.503s which saw him 16th in the afternoon session of the 26 drivers to take to the track on the '3D' circuit at the French venue of Paul Ricard.

After his first run in the morning to get used to the circuit and the car, a fresh set of tyres was mounted on his car and he set about trying to set the best lap-time possible.

Just before van Dam went out after the lunch break on new tyres the team altered the set-up again, but it did not bring the wanted result. Because he was sent out on new tyres too early, the peak of the tyres was reached way before the end of the day. With the track becoming quicker towards the end of the session van Dam dropped back in the standings.

He was however much quicker than his Finnish team-mate of the day, Henri Karjalainen, who was 1.8 seconds behind the 21-year-old.

“It was a great experience,” he said. “After fitting a seat last Thursday in their workshop near the Circuit de Catalunya, I made my debut in the GP2 Series car today. When I drove out of the pit lane for the first time today the powerful car really launched me like a catapult. A splendid feeling! The team changed the set-up several times, but it did not work out the way we wanted. We suffered from over-steer problems the whole day and were unable to get rid of them.

“I was given the test by the ATS organisers and was limited to 200 kilometres of testing. I specially want to thank Bertram Schäfer from the ATS Formula 3 Cup organisation for this free test. I also want to thank team-owner Enrique Scalabroni of BCN Competicion for the nice cooperation.

“Next week I will get back in action again in a World Series Formula Renault 3.5 car for Red Devil Team Comtec and then I will travel to Macau for the Formula 3 races with HBR Motorsport. We are already working hard to make another step in my motorsport career next year.”