Monras fastest of all in Magny-Cours practice

Spain's Miki Monras built upon his flying start to the 2011 FIA Formula Two season by topping the times in both practice sessions at Magny-Cours today (Friday). The only driver to break the one minute thirty second barrier, 19-year-old Monras lapped just a tenth slower than his benchmark time during Wednesday's official test.

In perfect conditions, Mirko Bortolotti, the only other man to have won a race in F2 this season, was second fastest of the day, the Austro-Italian lapping two-tenths off Monras' pace but was unable to repeat this in the later session and was only eighth quickest. It was Romanian Mihai Marinescu who tailed Monras this time, improving upon his earlier pace with third spot.

Tobias Hegewald, Christopher Zanella and Ramon Pineiro posted fast times but were not consistent in both sessions, whereas Briton Will Bratt held fifth place both times, lapping around one minute 32 seconds. His compatriot Jon Lancaster impressed on his F2 debut weekend with seventh and sixth places on the timesheets.

Alex Brundle and local driver Benjamin Lariche made the top ten both times, with Johannes Theobald, Armaan Ebrahim and Kelvin Snoeks also making appearances at the higher end of the table.

A confident Monras said: "That was a good practice and I hooked up a good lap on new tires. I only needed to do a small number of laps though which meant I could save my tires. Tomorrow's qualifying is going to be really close."