Giedo van der Garde and Kamui Kobayashi proved quickest on day two of testing at
Jerez in Spain, taking one session apiece - although it was the former that was quickest overall in the cooler morning session.
The second day of
GP2 Series winter testing saw a shuffle on the grid as only nine drivers ran in the same car as they did on Tuesday, namely Oliver Turvey (iSport), Luiz Razia (Piquet GP), Rodolfo Gonzalez (Arden), Ricardo Teixeira (Super Nova), James Jakes (Super Nova), Sam Bird (DAMS), Francesco Castellacci (Durango), Philip Eng (Ocean Racing) and Michael Herck (DPR).
Meanwhile ten new racers entered the fray, including some well-known to the
GP2 circus (Kamui Kobayashi, Dani Clos and Alberto Valerio) and some rookies (Marcus Ericsson, Sten Pentus, Jan Charouz, Filip Salaquarda, William Bratt, Fabio Leimer and Vladimir Arabadzhiev).
But it was the more experienced drivers who set the pace, led by van der Garde at Barwa Addax Team clocking in the best lap time of a 1 minute 25.291 second and over a tenth clear of Valerio driving for Party Poker Racing.com SC.
Behind the pair, Kobayashi – fresh from running with Toyota in Suzuka last Friday during F1 practice, at the wheel of Fat Burner Racing Engineering was also in good form and completed the top three.
In the afternoon, the temperatures rose and as a result no-one could improve. For the record though, the trouble-free PM session was led by Kobayashi, who was two tenths ahead of Jérôme d'Ambrosio. van der Garde was third in the afternoon, five tenths further back.
"This was a very good day, very positive," acknowledged the Dutchman. "We managed to maximise our track time; we were very quick this morning and in the afternoon we focussed on the long runs – it all went very well and the team was very happy with my performance and my feedback. The Barwa Addax car is very good, and almost immediately I could do whatever I wanted with it – the car suits my driving style very much, so I'm very satisfied."
The three-day test session will now conclude tomorrow with five-time
World Rally champion Sébastien Loeb in action for DPR.