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Palmer tops the free practice in Monaco

Jolyon Palmer set the fastest time in the GP2 free practice at Monaco. Johnny Cecotto and Stephane Richelmi finished behind the Briton.

The GP2 championship leader Jolyon Palmer finished the Monaco free practice in first position. The only drivers who finished less than a second behind the DAMS driver was the Barcelona feature race winner Johnny Cecotto and Palmer’s teammate and local driver Stephane Richelmi.

After ten minutes of delay due to light rain, all the drivers entered the track when the pit lane light went green. Local driver Richelmi was the first to top the timesheets, but the first place was snatched by his teammate Palmer. Nasr rose to the second position and Trummer went third with 10 minutes into the session.

The yellow flag made ​​its appearance due to Berthon’s accident in the last corner of the track. As expected, traffic was one of the big problems in this session and several drivers saw their laps ruined due to this circumstance.

The Monegasque Coletti went first, followed by Nasr, Cecotto and Abt. The Venezuelan set the fastest lap then, but was quickly surpassed by Nasr when the times improved constantly. Coletti recovered the best time moments later.

Canamasas had a run off at Saint Devote that caused a yellow flag. Evans rose to third place, just ahead of Leal. Nasr was second and tried to improve his time with the super-soft tyres, but suffered a crash at the chicane exiting the tunnel and caused a red flag.

The session was restarted with 13 minutes to go and all the drivers came out with super-soft tyres. Cecotto set the fastest time but was quickly beaten by Palmer. Coletti was third, with Evans and Canamasas just behind. Richelmi climbed to third place, just ahead of his countryman.

The classification did not change in the final minutes and Palmer finished in first position, followed by Cecotto , Richelmi , Coletti and Evans in the top 5.