Romain Grosjean has shown his rivals the way in free practice this morning at the Hockenheimring, taking the top spot in the session ahead of Kamui Kobayashi and Giorgio Pantano.

The session took place on a drying track after an earlier shower, with Grosjean's best time of 1:22.782 putting him just 0.067 ahead of the Japanese driver, with series leader Pantano a further three tenths behind.

The top three drivers shared the top spot between them: Kobayashi set the first fastest lap and held onto the position until the track dried enough for a line to appear ten minutes in, when Pantano took over on the timesheets, but no one has an answer for the Frenchman's best lap, which was set halfway through the session.

The conditions caught out a lot of drivers: Mike Conway was into the wall as he entered the complex on his first flying lap, while most of his competitors spun or ran wide at some stage during the session, including all of the top three, and series returnee Sakon Yamamoto stopped at the end of the pitlane late in the session, holding up teammate Grosjean until the Japanese driver was pushed out of the fast lane.

Behind the top three Lucas di Grassi led the way from Andreas Zuber, Jerome D'Ambrosio, Sébastien Buemi, Javier Villa (who was brought into the pits early with a black and orange flag as a result of some excess oil coming out of the back of his car) and Karun Chandhok: despite the difficult conditions 11 drivers were within a second of the top lap, promising a torrid qualifying session this afternoon.

Provided by the GP2 Series Media Service