Nelson Piquet Jr has given his championship aspirations the best possible start by taking pole position for the opening round of the GP2 series in Valencia. Nelson Piquet Jr will start the first race of the 2006 GP2 series campaign from pole position. The Brazilian, who has put in a number of strong performances in winter testing building up to the season opener, stopped the clock at 1:17.886, almost half a second faster than his nearest rival Tristan Gommendy.

"It was hard to get a clear lap early on," Piquet noted after the session, "but luckily I could get a good one behind Gommendy near the end. Everyone had traffic so I was a bit lucky, but the pace for everyone will be closer in the race."

ART driver Lewis Hamilton set the early pace in the session, bringing his lap times down each time around the Circuit Ricardo Tormo and looking like he had done enough to claim pole on his first attempt, but Piquet blew past with just three minutes remaining.

With Gommendy also pipping the Englishman’s time, Hamilton starts from third on the grid.

With the session running so early in the morning there was little rubber on the circuit, and a number of drivers were caught out by the conditions. Both FMS drivers spun harmlessly into the gravel, as did the Racing Engineering drivers, with Adam Carroll losing the rear end trying to improve on 13th position.

Hiroki Yoshimoto also suffered a small fire as he brought his car in to be weighed – the marshals were quick to spray their extinguishers, but it meant the Japanese driver’s session was over.

The times throughout the grid were extremely tight, with one second covering the first 11 drivers and two seconds blanketing 22 cars.