Jolyon Palmer placed fourth in the opening practice session of his home GP2 round at Silverstone today (Friday).  Jolyon was a permanent feature in the top portion of the standings throughout the 45-minute period which took place in clear conditions.

Jolyon set a 1m58.532s in the opening exchanges before moving down the order as the field were able to push for faster times. He immediately responded on the following lap, going fastest overall in both the first and second sectors, before a minor error hampered him in the final part of the lap. He was still fast enough to rise back to third in the standings.

The Southwater-based driver's next flying attempt resulted in a 1m42.862s lap, which was fast enough to place him top of the standings at the time. His seventh lap was good enough for second overall in the standings at the time, with a purple 41.4s middle sector, despite running wide at Club Corner.

The standings didn't change dramatically in the latter stages of the session, with Jolyon's best time of 1m41.404s good enough for fourth overall, just two tenths of a second shy of first.

Jolyon commented ahead of this afternoon's qualifying session, "It wasn't a bad start to the weekend finishing practice P4. My laps were wuite scrapy and I didn't hook them up very well. We have a few things to look at and try and improve now but I'm confident we should be fighting for pole in qualifying later."

GP2 Qualifying from Silverstone takes place at 13.55 UK time.

GP2, Silverstone, practice result
1, R Marciello, Racing Engineering, 1m41.127s
2, S Coletti, Racing Engineering, +0.134s
3, A Rossi, Caterham, +0.147s
4, J Palmer, DAMS, +0.277s
5, J Cecotto, Trident Racing, +0.321s
6, F Nasr, Carlin, +0.326s
7, S Richelmi, DAMS, +0.353s
8, S Vandoorne, ART Grand Prix, +0.541s
9, D De Jong, MP Motorsport, +0.602s
10, Mitch Evans, Russian Time, +0.610s

Full coverage of rounds nine and 10 of the 2014 GP2 season at Silverstone, including live timing, will be available on Jolyon's official website www.jolyonpalmer.com, while TV coverage of all sessions will be available on Sky F1's HD channel.