Asian Motor Sports

Japanese driver Kamui Kobayashi got his revenge on Thursday when after seeking pole position in Shanghai and failing, he brilliantly managed to be the quickest man of the day, securing top spot on the grid for today’s feature race of the second round of the GP2 Asia Series.

The DAMS racer delivered his best performance with only two minutes left on the clock. In a trouble-free session and a cleaner track than during Free Practice, Kobayashi signed the fastest laptime ahead of countryman Sakon Yamamoto at the wheel of his ART car.

Vitaly Petrov completed the top 3 – an all Asian driver top finishers, but the Russian from Campos was quite disappointed coming out of his car as he was really aiming for pole. However, traffic and a clash with van Der Drift in his final lap meant that Petrov never had the opportunity to show the true potential of his machine. The championship leader, Roldan Rodriguez at Piquet GP secured the second row, clocking the fourth quickest laptime, ahead of Shanghai sprint race winner Davide Valsecchi at Durango.

Yelmer Buurman brought another great result to newcomers Ocean Racing Technology, finishing 6th, ahead of rookie van der Garde at GFH Team iSport. Earlier in the session, Diego Nunes looked like a real poleman contender, but he eventually placed his Piquet GP car in eighth place ahead of another rookie, Sergio Perez, on the second Campos car. Dams’ d’Ambrosio completed the Top 10. The first twelve cars finished in the same second