Spa GP2: Vandoorne sets practice pace on home soil

GP2 points leader Stoffel Vandoorne kicked off his home race weekend in style by topping the timesheets in Saturday's practice session.

Second place Stoffel Vandoorne, ART Grand Prix

Alex Lynn, DAMS leads Pierre Gasly, DAMS

The McLaren-backed Belgian ousted Alexander Rossi from the top spot just over 10 minutes into the session with a time of 1m57.499s, going two tenths quicker than the Californian.

Vandoorne was then able to shave a further 0.013s off his benchmark on his next flying lap to record a 1m57.486s, which would go unchallenged for the remainder of the session as the drivers switched their focus to longer runs thereafter.

Mitch Evans slotted into second, 0.154s behind Vandoorne, demoting Rossi to third place.

Hungary feature race winner Alex Lynn was fourth fastest, 0.347s off the pace and just eight thousandths clear of fellow Briton Oliver Rowland in his second GP2 outing of the season - although the MP Motorsport driver ground to a halt on his way back to the pits.

In the dying stages of the session, Lynn's DAMS teammate Pierre Gasly jumped from 13th to sixth, with Sergey Sirotkin demoted to seventh and Arthur Pic, who ended the session with a spin into the barriers, being pushed down to eighth.

Completing the top 10 were Jordan King and Raffaele Marciello, who came to a stop at the pit exit midway through the session but was able to resume.

Marciello's new Trident teammate Gustav Malja was less fortunate, his debut GP2 session coming to a premature halt after a spin at the final chicane.

Practice times:

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	Stoffel Vandoorne	ART Grand Prix	1'57.486
2	Mitch Evans	RUSSIAN TIME	1'57.640	0.154
3	Alexander Rossi	Racing Engineering	1'57.731	0.245
4	Alex Lynn	DAMS	1'57.833	0.347
5	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	1'57.841	0.355
6	Pierre Gasly	DAMS	1'57.871	0.385
7	Sergey Sirotkin	Rapax	1'58.108	0.622
8	Arthur Pic	Campos Racing	1'58.141	0.655
9	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	1'58.188	0.702
10	Raffaele Marciello	Trident	1'58.231	0.745
11	Norman Nato	Arden International	1'58.249	0.763
12	Sergio Canamasas	Daiko Team Lazarus	1'58.343	0.857
13	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	1'58.446	0.960
14	Daniël de Jong	MP Motorsport	1'58.463	0.977
15	Richie Stanaway	Status Grand Prix	1'58.496	1.010
16	Andre Negrao	Arden International	1'58.744	1.258
17	Rio Haryanto	Campos Racing	1'58.822	1.336
18	Nathanael Berthon	Daiko Team Lazarus	1'58.866	1.380
19	Julian Leal	Carlin	1'58.884	1.398
20	Marlon Stockinger	Status Grand Prix	1'59.202	1.716
21	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	1'59.209	1.723
22	Nick Yelloly	Hilmer Motorsport	1'59.232	1.746
23	Robert Visoiu	Rapax	1'59.610	2.124
24	Sean Gelael	Carlin	2'00.683	3.197
25	Gustav Malja	Trident	2'01.194	3.708