Duran fastest in China practice 1

Duran lapped the 5.45km track in one minute 52.513 seconds, posting the fastest session time before blotting his copybook slightly with a brief moment towards the end of the session when he overdid it and ran wide off the track onto the grass, before continuing.

Second quickest, just 0.208 of a second behind, was the Malaysian entry of Alex Yoong. The former Minardi racer is the only driver in the field to have experience of the track, having raced in the Porsche Carrera Cup Asia event that supported the 2004 Chinese Grand Prix.

Nicolas Lapierre was third quickest for newly crowned champions Team France. This weekend Lapierre is sharing driving duties with teammate Alex Premat. Lapierre will drive the feature race and Premat will take the shorter sprint race.

Michael Devaney's Irish car was fourth quickest despite the 21-year-old running off into the tyres towards the end of the session.

For the most part, the session ran without major incident. Graham Rahal, driving in the Lebanese car for the third race this season, coasted to a halt with ten minutes to go after a pit radio communication mix-up meant he hadn't come in for fuel in time, and ran dry out on the circuit.

Pos  Driver                Team            Time              Laps
 1.  Salvador Duran        Mexico          1:52.513           20
 2.  Alex Yoong            Malaysia        1:52.721 + 0.208   16
 3.  Nicolas Lapierre      France          1:52.733 + 0.220   17
 4.  Michael Devaney       Ireland         1:52.919 + 0.406    9
 5.  Patrick Carpentier    Canada          1:52.989 + 0.476   18
 6.  Ryan Briscoe          Australia       1:53.229 + 0.716   21
 7.  Darren Manning        Great Britain   1:53.314 + 0.801   20
 8.  Stephen Simpson       South Africa    1:53.452 + 0.939   13
 9.  Matt Halliday         New Zealand     1:53.508 + 0.995   21
10.  Philip Giebler        USA             1:53.546 + 1.033   18
11.  Jos Verstappen        Netherlands     1:53.560 + 1.047   16
12.  Ananda Mikola         Indonesia       1:53.626 + 1.113   17
13.  Adam Khan             Pakistan        1:53.662 + 1.149   19
14.  Giorgio Mondini       Switzerland     1:53.966 + 1.453   21
15.  Graham Rahal          Lebanon         1:54.001 + 1.488   22
16.  Tomas Enge            Czech Republic  1:54.125 + 1.612   19
17.  Cesar Campanico       Portugal        1:54.264 + 1.751   18
18.  Christian Fittipaldi  Brazil          1:54.841 + 2.328   20
19.  Enrico Toccacelo      Italy           1:54.868 + 2.355   20
20.  Qinghua Ma            China           1:55.087 + 2.574   12
21.  Mathias Lauda         Austria         1:55.095 + 2.582   10
22.  Sebastian Stahl       Germany         1:56.833 + 4.320   21