Zuber quickest in Hungary practice

In an up and down GP2 free practice session for Piquet Sports, Andi Zuber set the fastest time on Friday afternoon but teammate Pastor Maldonado crashed heavily.

Zuber lapped the Hungaroring in 1:28.797, just 0.023 seconds faster than series leader Giorgio Pantano (Racing Engineering). Lucas di Grassi was third fastest for Campos, and he was closely followed by Romain Grosjean (ART) and Karun Chandhok (iSport).

Vitaly Petrov made it two Campos cars in the top six, ahead of Javier Villa (Racing Engineering), Jerome d'Ambrosio (DAMS) and Sebastien Buemi (Arden).

With 10 minutes of the session to go, Maldonado had his big shunt, understeering into tyre wall. He appeared to turn in too sharply to a fast left-hander, caught the initial slide but simply skipped across the gravel trap and thumped the wall hard.

The impact removed both the front and rear right-side wheels, and the chances of his team repairing the damage in time for qualifying in three and a half hours looks remote. He was tenth quickest in the session.

Besides that shunt, the session was relatively quiet. Marco Asmer had a quick spin early on, while Grosjean, di Grassi, Villa and Petrov all ran wide but continued.

Pos Driver Team Time Laps 1. Zuber Piquet Sports 1:28.797 14 2. Pantano Racing Engineering 1:28.820 + 0.023 14 3. Di Grassi Barwa Campos Team 1:28.913 + 0.116 16 4. Grosjean ART Grand Prix 1:28.941 + 0.144 14 5. Chandhok iSport International 1:28.983 + 0.186 15 6. Petrov Barwa Campos Team 1:29.030 + 0.233 16 7. Villa Racing Engineering 1:29.112 + 0.315 14 8. D'ambrosio Dams 1:29.327 + 0.530 14 9. Buemi Trust Team Arden 1:29.343 + 0.546 16 10. Maldonado Piquet Sports 1:29.398 + 0.601 9 11. Senna iSport International 1:29.495 + 0.698 16 12. Soucek Super Nova Racing 1:29.496 + 0.699 16 13. Conway Trident Racing 1:29.533 + 0.736 16 14. Parente Super Nova Racing 1:29.587 + 0.790 16 15. Nunes DPR 1:29.744 + 0.947 16 16. Valles BCN Competicion 1:29.880 + 1.083 18 17. Tung Trident Racing 1:30.129 + 1.332 16 18. Valsecchi Durango 1:30.197 + 1.400 16 19. Filippi Trust Team Arden 1:30.223 + 1.426 15 20. Valerio Durango 1:30.334 + 1.537 17 21. Yamamoto ART Grand Prix 1:30.470 + 1.673 15 22. Kobayashi Dams 1:30.516 + 1.719 12 23. Rodriguez FMS International 1:30.676 + 1.879 15 24. Herck DPR 1:31.213 + 2.416 17 25. Iaconelli BCN Competicion 1:31.755 + 2.958 18 26. Asmer FMS International 1:31.988 + 3.191 14