Virgin Racing's European Grand Prix got underway in Valencia today with the first two Free Practice sessions for Sunday's 57-lap race on this 5.419km street circuit.

The opening practice session began on a dusty track in bright sunshine and with an ambient temperature of 25°C. It was a positive morning of running for both Timo Glock and Lucas di Grassi with the mechanical developments introduced for this race clearly representing a positive step forward.

This afternoon got off to a good start but halfway through the session Timo suffered a gearbox problem which curtailed his running after 14 laps and he was unable to run the Option tyre because of this. Lucas had a better second session but was unable to get the most from the Option tyre when he ran it towards the end of the session.

Timo Glock: "It has been a reasonable day for us apart from the gearbox problem that we had this afternoon. Apart from that the car didn't feel too bad. It's difficult to comment on our pace because I lost some time at the end of the session and didn't get my Option run, but in general I'm happy with the first laps of the weekend and we'll see how it goes tomorrow."

Lucas di Grassi: "Today was a very good day and we achieved everything that we needed to from our programme. We didn't experience any major problems, so I'm pleased with the work we have done so far and I'm looking forward to seeing how we can improve for tomorrow."

Nick Wirth, Technical Director: "Timo lost fifth gear in the middle of the second Free Practice session, which spoiled what was otherwise a very satisfying day. We really have been focusing on understanding our first major performance upgrade of the year and it seems to be giving us the sort of advantages we had seen in our research. The team has done a good job getting a solid body of knowledge around it, and I think we have enough data to get a good qualifying and race set-up. In theory the car should be better again when we start running low fuel, so I'm expecting to see some progress in qualifying tomorrow. Our attentions this evening will be focused on understanding the nature of Timo's gearbox failure and preparing the cars for what should be an interesting day tomorrow."

To check out our Valencia practice gallery, click here