Racing Engineering’s new driver, Italian Giorgio Pantano, showed in qualifying today just how quickly he and the Racing Engineering team have adapted to each other with a superb display to take pole position for tomorrow’s Feature Race. To further emphasise just how competitive the Racing Engineering Repsol/Telefónica supported Dallaras are Javier Villa set a time good enough for eighth place, the best qualifying position the young Spaniard has achieved so far in GP2.

The pair of Racing Engineering cars were on the pace from the start for today’s practice and qualifying at the Istanbul circuit with both drivers looking to finding the best possible set up for their cars in this morning’s practice session. Giorgio was quick from the onset using his experience to ensure he got the maximum from his car and he was soon at the top of the timing sheets. Working with the Racing Engineering team to optimise his car he eventually set a time of 1m 33.815s, quickest in all three sectors of the track. The Italian was the only driver of the 26 that practised to lap in the 1m 33s bracket.

For Giorgio, qualification was simply a case of continuing the great work that he and the team had achieved in practice and he didn’t disappoint dominating the session to take pole position in a time of 1m 32.659s. Giorgio’s quickest lap was a quarter of a second faster than the next quickest, quite a big margin in the very competitive world of GP2 racing.

The two points awarded for pole position mean that Giorgio is now equal first in the Drivers Championship while Racing Engineering now leads the Team Championship.

Alfonso de Orleans Borbón (team principal): "Well I think it was very, very good. Considering it is Javier’s best qualification to date and he has been able to get on the podium coming from further back so I see no reason why he is not on the podium tomorrow. Well Giorgio, it was a fantastic pole position and it raises us into first in the Team Championship so that makes us very happy and he is co-leading the Drivers Championship so we are pretty much first in everything. Let’s hope we carry that through tomorrow. As for the boys, the whole team did a lot of hard work after Barcelona to get the cars ready, they have done a fantastic job and first of all I want to congratulate all of the boys and of course Cristina, the only girl in the technical crew."

Giorgio Pantano (driver car 12): For me it was perfect and we did the job. I was feeling from this morning that the car was very good. I was feeling OK with the car, the circuit the tyres, everything and we did the job because everything was there. The engineers, the mechanics did their job, we’ve improved the car from Barcelona and now we see the difference. Now we are on pole, we are on the top. Tomorrow it will be hard for the race but I believe we can do the job."

Così al via di Gara 1:
 
1 Giorgio Pantano - Racing Engineering - 1'32.659
2 Andreas Zuber - Piquet Sports - 1'32.913
3 Adam Carroll - FMSI - 1'33.141
4 Romain Grosjean - ART Grand Prix - 1'33.248
5 Bruno Senna - iSport International - 1'33.449
6 Pastor Maldonado - Piquet Sports - 1'33.451
7 Karun Chandhok - iSport International - 1'33.703
8 Javier Villa - Racing Engineering - 1'33.813
9 Davide Valsecchi - Durango - 1'33.841
10 Vitaly Petrov - Campos Team - 1'33.896
11 Jerome D'Ambrosio - Dams - 1'33.948
12 Adrian Valles - BCN competicion - 1'34.006
13 Andy Soucek - Super Nova - 1'34.064
14 Mike Conway - Trident Racing - 1'34.170
15 Sebastien Buemi - Trust Team Arden - 1'34.173
16 Yelmer Buurman - Trust Team Arden - 1'34.186
17 Luca Filippi - ART Grand Prix - 1'34.366
18 Ho Pin Tung - Trident Racing - 1'34.506
19 Diego Nunes - DPR - 1'34.617
20 Alvaro Parente - Super Nova - 1'34.620
21 Roldan Rodriguez - FMSI - 1'34.698
22 Ben Hanley - Campos Team - 1'33.957
23 Milos Pavlovic - BCN Competicion - 1'35.398
24 Giacomo Ricci - DPR - 1'35.876
25 Kamui Kobayashi - Dams - 1'34.667
26 Alberto Valerio - Durango - 1'34.678

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