Jolyon Palmer made a promising start to this morning's (Wednesday) opening GP2 test session in Jerez by running seventh quickest.  

The 20-year-old Brit, who enjoyed a string of top 10 finishes during his maiden season this year with Arden, switched to leading British team iSport for today's test session, the first of two at the 4.428km Spanish circuit.

In sunny, dry conditions, Jolyon began the three-hour session strongly, improving on his lap times and by the mid-way point was running in the top 10. With 30 minutes to go, Jolyon then went P7 where he remained until the chequered flag came out and ending a good session against a strong field.

Speaking after the session Jolyon said: "We had a good morning session. Improving throughout and in the end did two laps very similar to go P7. There is more time in there as I made a couple of mistakes and had my last lap disrupted by red flags. This afternoon we are doing some race simulations so that will be good to see how we can handle the degradation."

Meanwhile, Racing Engineering's Fabio Leimer headed the timesheets with Luca Filippi second and Sam Bird third.

Jolyon is next on track later today for the afternoon session before switching to Team Barwa Addax for tomorrow's day two.

Jerez, GP2 test session day one, morning results:

1. F Leimer, Racing Engineering, 1:27.282s
2. L Filippi, Scuderia, +0.009s
3. S Bird, Rapax, +0.273s
4. J Cecotto, Addax, +0.284s
5. F Onidi, Scuderia, +0.305s
6. Y Buurman, AirAsia, +0.504s
7. J Palmer, iSport, +0.519s
8. D Clos, Addax, +0.612s
9. J Kral, Trident, +0.627s
10. A Costa, AirAsia, +0.808s