Racing Engineering pairing Jordan King and Alexander Rossi topped free practice for the opening GP2 event of the year in Bahrain.
Rossi hit the top of the timesheets early on with a lap of 1m42.451s, with rookie King later eclipsing that by just one-hundredth of a second.
With the pre-season test in Bahrain suggesting the field would be very competitive up front, expectations were lived up to with Williams F1 development driver Alex Lynn third fastest for DAMS, just 0.068 seconds off King.
That was enough to put him ahead of title favourite Stoffel Vandoorne, who was a tenth slower and 0.171s off the overall pace in the lead ART Grand Prix entry.
Why GP2 could give McLaren a problem
The Belgian’s session came to a premature end with seven minutes remaining when he ground to a halt shortly after the first corner with a mechanical problem.
There was then a gap back to the Campos Racing cars of Arthur Pic and Rio Haryanto, respectively five and six-tenths off the pace.
Red Bull-backed Pierre Gasly in the second DAMS car was expected to be up front, but a moment at Turn 8, the left-hander onto the back straight, cost him time and left him eight-tenths down.
Russian Time driver Mitch Evans, another who showed well in testing, was unable to match the pace of the frontrunners and ended the session down in eighth ahead of Ferrari junior Raffaele Marciello’s Trident entry and Honda-backed Japanese F3 champion Nobuharu Matsushita in the second ART car.
Carlin, which finished last season with Felipe Nasr third in the championship, had a disappointing session after waiting until the first 15 minutes had passed before sending out its drivers.
Category veteran Julian Leal ended up 12th fastest behind Artem Markelov, with GP2 race winner Marco Sorensen down in 15th place.
Richie Stanaway, currently on a one-round deal with the Status team, was 17th ahead of Sergio Canamasas, who landed an eleventh-hour seat with MP Motorsport.
This session marked the first time that the new GP2 DRS was used in an official race-weekend session, with drivers permitted to activate the device in the same zones as F1 uses.
Full results to follow