Felipe Nasr leads Barcelona free practice

Carlin driver sets the pace in Round 3 opening session

Felipe Nasr has set the tone: the Carlin racer is hungry for glory this week at Circuit de Catalunya and he wasted no time in showing his rivals how quick he can be setting up the fastest laptime in this morning’s free practice session in a 1:30.103, seven tenths clear from James Calado who finished second.

The session opened on a drying track with most of the drivers opting to wait before taking to the track. Robin Frijns set the early pace. The rookie’s latpime of 1:31.264 gave the signal for the remainder of the drivers to feed onto the track. Frijns improved on his next attempt to clock in a time of 1:31.010.

Ten minutes into the session, Nasr put his head down and lit sectors 1 and 2 in purple before crossing the start/finish line in 1:30.103, a clear nine tenths from Frijns. His teammate Jolyon Palmer also found the extra pace to move up to P2, but eight tenths slower than the Brazilian and thus enough room for Calado and Johnny Cecotto to split the Carlin pair.

Halfway through the session, the track was yellow flagged when Simon Trummer stopped at Turn 13. Most of the drivers made their way back into the pits. Series leader Stefano Coletti who had yet to make an appearance onto the track decided to benefit from light traffic to make his way into the top ten. At the chequered flag, Nasr retained P1 ahead of Calado, Cecotto, Palmer, Frijns, Coletti, Sam Bird, Tom Dillmann, Marcus Ericsson and Fabio Leimer.

If this morning’s weather forecast brought rain, this afternoon’s should bring sunny conditions also known as the best conditions for a classic GP2 qualifying session at 16.00 local time.