Vitantonio Liuzzi leads disrupted second practice at Donington
Vitantonio Liuzzi was fastest of all in the second free practice session at Donington Park, leading his Romeo Ferraris Mercedes team-mate Thomas Biagi by half a second with Scuderia Giudici’s Colin Turkington third.
The session was red flagged after just a few minutes after both the Roma Racing Mercedes C63 Coupé of Luigi Ferrara stopped on the Melbourne hairpin and Giovanni Berton’s Team Dinamic BMW M3 ground to a halt coming out of Coppice and required recovering back to the pits.
When the session resumed, Liuzzi was quick to take P1 away from team-mate Biagi, who had been the only driver able to set a time before the red flag with a time of 1:35.327, but Biagi soon surged back ahead with a time of 1:35.157.
Liuzzi then became the only driver to break into the 1:34s in the second session, setting a time of 1:34.970 shortly before stopping at the hairpin, which again brought out the red flag, but he was able to return to the pits by himself.
Colin Turkington ended the session third fastest, setting an improvement late in the session with a time of 1:35.228, with second placed Biagi, Turkington and Francesco Sini’s Solaris Motorsport Chevrolet Camaro all very close together just over half a second behind Liuzzi’s time.
Giovanni Berton was able to rejoin the session after stopping early on and wound up fifth, just ahead of Gianni Morbidelli’s Audi RS 5, with Dominico Schiattarella’s Solaris Chevrolet Lumina in seventh.
Team Dinamic’s Max Mugelli was eighth fastest with the two Caal Racing Mercedes of Andrea Bacci and Roberto Papini rounding out the top ten.
Qualifying takes place at 17:05 BST.
