Jordan King sets the pace at Bahrain International Circuit

Racing Engineering lead the way with a 1-2 in free practice
The eleventh season of the GP2 Series kicked off today at Bahrain International Circuit with rookie Jordan King setting the pace with a laptime of 1:42.441, a mere 0.01s seconds quicker than his teammate Alexander Rossi.
The trouble-free session opened in scorching temperatures of thirty-five degrees. The DAMS duo were the first to feed onto the track with the rest of the field in tow and on Medium Pirelli tyres. Rossi set the early pace clocking in a laptime time 0.058s better than reigning GP3 Champion Alex Lynn’s in P2. Twelve minutes into the session, King lapped the Bahraini track one hundredth quicker than the American and until the end of the session, no one would better it.
The clock continued to tick down and with seven minutes left, Stoffel Vandoorne stopped at Turn 3 with mechanical gremlins. The first sector was flagged with double yellows and when the track was clear again, no one improved.
At the chequered flag, King led Rossi and Lynn. Vandoorne finished the session in fourth place ahead of Arthur Pic, Rio Haryanto, Pierre Gasly, Mitch Evans, Raffaele Marciello and Nobuharu Matsushita.
The teams will now have time to collect the data and work on the perfect set-up for tonight’s qualifying session which will take place at 20.00 (local time) in cooler temperatures and with soft compounds at everyone’s disposal.
Sakhir – Free Practice
Driver
Team
Laptime
Laps
1.
Jordan King
Racing Engineering
1:42.441
17
2.
Alexander Rossi
Racing Engineering
1:42.451
20
3.
Alex Lynn
DAMS
1:42.509
18
4.
Stoffel Vandoorne
ART Grand Prix
1:42.612
14
5.
Arthur Pic
Campos Racing
1:42.948
16
6.
Rio Haryanto
Campos Racing
1:43.043
16
7.
Pierre Gasly
DAMS
1:43.249
18
8.
Mitch Evans
RUSSIAN TIME
1:43.327
16
9.
Raffaele Marciello
Trident
1:43.400
16
10.
Nobuharu Matsushita
ART Grand Prix
1:43.422
18
11.
Artem Markelov
RUSSIAN TIME
1:43.457
18
12.
Julian Leal
Carlin
1:43.581
12
13.
Sergey Sirotkin
Rapax
1:43.581
12
14.
Norman Nato
Arden International
1:43.762
14
15.
Marco Sorensen
Carlin
1:43.774
16
16.
Robert Visoiu
Rapax
1:43.810
13
17.
Richie Stanaway
Status Grand Prix
1:43.814
16
18.
Sergio Canamasas
MP Motorsport
1:43.948
14
19
Nathanaël Berton
Lazarus
1:44.178
14
20.
Rene Binder
Trident
1:44.233
18
21.
Marlon Stockinger
Status Grand Prix
1:44.515
12
22.
Daniel De Jong
MP Motorsport
1:44.517
15
23.
André Negrao
Arden International
1:44.529
14
24.
Zoel Amberg
Lazarus
1:51.825
5