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Jules Bianchi takes Silverstone GP2 pole in rain-hit session

Jules Bianchi took pole position for the first GP2 race of the weekend in a rain-hit qualifying at Silverstone

The only meaningful laps came in the first part of the session, as heavy rain soaked the track just nine minutes in. ART driver Bianchi had poached top spot from championship leader Romain Grosjean (DAMS) just two minutes earlier, and shortly before the rain Carlin's Alvaro Parente had taken the second front row slot.

Track conditions never got anywhere near close enough to allowing anyone to improve on their early times, so Bianchi and the majority of the field spent the rest of the 30 minutes sat in the pits.

That left Grosjean third, but he will take a 10-place drop on the grid for causing a collision at the start of the Valencia sprint race two weeks ago.

That means that the second row will be occupied by the Racing Engineering cars of Christian Vietoris and Dani Clos, with Max Chilton the top home driver in fifth for Carlin.

The mid-session rain did leave a few expected frontrunners much further down the grid than they would have hoped.

Luca Filippi went through the gravel at Club corner early in the session and ended up 17th, while Giedo van der Garde's miserable day continued as he was only 19th when the rain fell.

Fabio Leimer came off even worse than those two, having not set a time before the rain came down. That left him 25th, as Kevin Mirocha did not take part in the session due to a shoulder injury.

Pos  Driver               Team                Time       Gap
 1.  Jules Bianchi        ART                 1m58.531s
 2.  Alvaro Parente       Carlin              1m58.971s  + 0.440s
 3.  Romain Grosjean      DAMS                1m59.020s  + 0.489s
 4.  Christian Vietoris   Racing Engineering  1m59.143s  + 0.612s
 5.  Dani Clos            Racing Engineering  1m59.881s  + 1.350s
 6.  Max Chilton          Carlin              1m59.952s  + 1.421s
 7.  Marcus Ericsson      iSport              2m00.044s  + 1.513s
 8.  Esteban Gutierrez    ART                 2m00.109s  + 1.578s
 9.  Sam Bird             iSport              2m00.175s  + 1.644s
10.  Charles Pic          Addax               2m00.223s  + 1.692s
11.  Johnny Cecotto       Ocean               2m00.300s  + 1.769s
12.  Jolyon Palmer        Arden               2m00.462s  + 1.931s
13.  Davide Valsecchi     AirAsia             2m00.527s  + 1.996s
14.  Michael Herck        Coloni              2m00.529s  + 1.998s
15.  Julian Leal          Rapax               2m00.927s  + 2.396s
16.  Pal Varhaug          DAMS                2m01.203s  + 2.672s
17.  Luca Filippi         Super Nova          2m01.315s  + 2.784s
18.  Kevin Ceccon         Coloni              2m01.816s  + 3.285s
19.  Giedo van der Garde  Addax               2m01.894s  + 3.363s
20.  Luiz Razia           AirAsia             2m01.922s  + 3.391s
21.  Stefano Coletti      Trident             2m02.681s  + 4.150s
22.  Josef Kral           Arden               2m02.800s  + 4.269s
23.  Rodolfo Gonzalez     Trident             2m03.268s  + 4.737s
24.  Fairuz Fauzy         Super Nova          2m04.518s  + 5.987s
25.  Fabio Leimer         Rapax               2m08.608s  + 10.077s
26.  Kevin Mirocha        Ocean

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