Marinescu leads second practice at Silverstone

Date published : 15 Apr 2011 - 16:02:00

GPUpdateMarinescu leads second practice at Silverstone15 April 2011 Mihai Marinescu topped the timesheets during second free practice at Silverstone on Friday, as the Romanian posted a late effort of 1:51.893 to edge out Ramón Piñeiro who is embarking on his first full Formula 2 campaign. Tobias Hegewald completed the top three, with the 21-year-old ending the session over half a second adrift of the pace-setting time. The session began under similar conditions to first practice, although temperatures had dropped slightly in the county of Northamptonshire as the day progressed. Marinescu and Piñeiro were the only men to make it under the 1:52.000 barrier during the 45 minutes of track action, while behind third place man Hegewald, Miki Monrás and James Cole secured fourth and fifth respectively.  Dutchman Kelvin Snoeks completed 15 laps en route to claiming sixth, while British Formula 3 graduate Max Snegirev finished seventh. Thiemo Storz briefly led when the session got back underway following a red flag period, although the German could not maintain his position at the sharp end of the timing screens, dropping back to eighth at the end of the session. British compatriots Will Bratt and Jack Clarke rounded out the top ten, with the latter just fractions ahead of former Italian F3 Champion Mirko Bortolotti. The teams will now be preparing for Saturday's all-important qualifying session, before the opening F2 race of the 2011 season gets underway in the afternoon. Saturday's third and final practice session begins at 10:10am local time (BST)