Timo Glock is already touted as one of the favourites for the 2007 GP2 Championship after agreeing to return to the iSport fold next year and the German driver backed those claims up by leading the first day of the final test of 2006 at Valencia on Friday.

Glock led a busy field of current and potential GP2 contenders on a chilly but dry day at the Spanish circuit with his session leading time from Friday morning standing firm for the rest of the day.

Glock stopped the clocks in a best time of 1min 18.541secs in the first of two, rather crowded sessions, two tenths quicker than his fellow ex-F1 and Champ Car refugee Antonio Pizzonia. However while Pizzonia's F1 days may well be over, Glock had to switch his mindset directly from F1 to GP2 after spending Thursday behind the wheel of Nick Heidfeld's BMW Sauber.

Nobody was able to better Glock's time in the afternoon despite slightly more favourable track conditions with Arden's Luca Filippi fastest of the bunch despite only having half a session in the car.

Filippi's quickest mark of 1min 18.680secs would stand as the second fastest time of the day overall with DAMS driver Nicolas Lapierre third at 1:18.689, Borja Garcia fourth with a 1:18.705 and Andreas Zuber fifth at 1:18.743.

British F3 Champion Mike Conway was tenth fastest in the morning session for SuperNova but failed to find any extra speed in the afternoon session and wound up 13th on the combined charts with a top lap of 1:19.215secs while Ben Hanley was just a tenth of a second slower with a top lap of 1:19.371secs. However due to the extremely close nature of the GP2 field that speed was only good enough for 19th overall.

Bruno Senna meanwhile continued to struggle to find his feet in GP2 machinery and languished towards the bottom of the timesheets in both sessions. By the end of the day the Arden driver had worked his way down to a best time of 1:19.598secs having picked up nearly a full second over his morning efforts.

Leading test times – Valencia – December 1st

Timo Glock iSport International 1:18.541secs
Luca Filippi Arden International 1:18.680secs
Nicolas Lapierre DAMS 1:18.689secs
Borja Garcia Durango 1:18.705secs
Andreas Zuber iSport International 1:18.743secs
Antonio Pizzonia FMS International 1:18.793secs
Jose Maria Lopez BCN Competition 1:18.899secs
Javier Villa Racing Engineering 1:18.936secs
Giorgio Pantano Campos Racing 1:18.949secs
Michael Ammermuller ART Grand Prix 1:19.007secs

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