Jolyon Palmer made a promising start to this morning's (Wednesday) opening GP2 test session in Barcelona by running 10th fastest.

The 20-year-old from Southwater carried over his strong pace from the previous test session in Jerez last month to finish in the top 10 at the 4.655km Circuit de Catalunya.

Jolyon, who enjoyed a string of top 10 finishes during his maiden GP2 season, ran the session running with leading team Barwa Addax who secured this year's team championship.

The session began in sunny conditions with Jolyon showing impressive form early on to run fifth quickest. He briefly dropped down the order before moving his way up to eighth with 30 minutes remaining and finally secured P10 as the chequered flag went out.

iSport's Marcus Ericsson topped the timesheets followed by Dani Clos and Esteban Gutierrez.

Speaking afterwards Jolyon said: "I finished in P10 this morning. We struggled on the first set of tyres with some bad traffic but on the second set I was able to find some good pace and move up the order. This afternoon I will be doing some long runs for race simulations."

Jolyon will return to the track later today for the afternoon session testing for Addax before switching to Carlin for tomorrow's test day.

Barcelona, GP2 test session day one, morning results:

1. M Ericsson, iSport
2. D Clos, Scuderia
3. E Gutierrez, ART
4. K Ceccon, Scuderia
5. N Melker, Ocean
6. T Dillmann, iSport
7. J Leal, Addax
8. A Rossi, AirAsia
9. K Magnussen, Carlin
10. J Palmer, Addax