20/07/2007
NEWS STORY
Timo Glock has put his championship aspirations back on track by claiming a dominant pole position for tomorrow’s race one in front of his home fans at the Nurburgring.
The German looked strong throughout the session before shutting down challenges in the closing minutes from Lucas di Grassi and Giorgio Pantano with a laptime of 1:40.977, which was more than half a second ahead of the Brazilian‘s best time.
After this morning’s damp free practice all eyes were on the sky ahead of the session, but the clouds kept away and greeted the drivers with bright sunshine as they came out on track.
Glock set the early running and kept eating away at his own best lap, with Mike Conway, Luca Filippi and Pastor Maldonado pushing him in the early stages of the session: the German was just 0.02 to the good as the majority of the field came in for their second set of tyres.
Di Grassi came out with clear intent of taking his first pole position, claiming the top spot with a 1:41.597 and setting the fastest first sector on the next lap before getting stuck behind a slowing Xandi Negrao.
But the German was not to be denied, immediately responding with a time one tenth quicker again and then pushing on from there. Teammate Andi Zuber was also pushing hard to get on terms with Glock, but a wayward trip through the gravel at turn 11 put paid to a promising time.
As the session was coming to a close both di Grassi and Pantano put in fast laps, but Glock had them covered with his fastest lap of the session with just 2 minutes remaining, claiming two more points to double his current championship lead.
Behind the top three Adrian Zaugg, Zuber, Kazuki Nakajima and Adam Carroll were among the ten men within a second of pole, with all bar three of the drivers within two seconds of the top spot.
Provided by the GP2 Series Media Service
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