Having finished second in free practice behind Piquet Sports team-mate Andreas Zuber, Pastor Maldonado stormed to the first pole position of the new GP2 Series season in Barcelona ahead of the first race weekend for the latest specification GP2 machine.
Maldonado, who finished eleventh in the standings last season while racing for the Trident team, was on the pace throughout the half hour session at the Catalunya circuit and consistently improved his times to end up with a fastest lap of 1m 27.547s.
That put the Venezuelan little more than a tenth of a second ahead of Super Nova driver Alvaro Parente, while Zuber completed the top three – albeit more than half a second away from the pole time.
The session itself was hit by a red flag just nine minutes in after Sebastien Buemi – runner-up in the inaugural GP2 Asia Series campaign – went off at turn eight. Encountering a slower car on the racing line, the Arden man was forced to take avoiding action and took to the grass before his car spun back across the track and went backwards into the wall. Having only completed five laps up until that point, he will start down in 20th place on the grid.
Once Buemi's car was removed from the track, the real battle for pole began after the early flurry of lap times, with Maldonado quickly moving to the top of the pile before gradually starting to improve his times.
Zuber did his best to respond to the Venezuelan's pace and in the end he couldn't even hold second after Parente saved his best for last to secure his place on the front row and split the Piquet pair ahead of his GP2 debut.
Alongside Zuber on row two, Bruno Senna will start from fourth for iSport despite going off at the chicane and ending his session early while Giorgio Pantano and Adrian Valles will share row three. Karun Chandhok, Vitaly Petrov, Javier Villa and Mike Conway complete the top ten – with former British F3 title winner Conway being the first man not within a second of the pole time.
![The eyes have it: GP2 Series front-runner Pastor Maldonado [pic credit: GP2 Media]](http://pix.crash.net/thumbs/393800.jpg)
