With the teams pushing hard to get out their best possible times and test the car before the event, the Netherlands made a strong impression as their driver Jeroen Bleekemolen constantly improved on his timing in the afternoon. He produced two fastest times before  finally finishing with one minute, 18.738 seconds.
Karthikeyan was running fifth with a time of 1:20.080 in the first half hour of the afternoon practice but then recorded a time of 1:19.580. What pushed him down was some stunning driving from South Africa's Adrian Zaugg, who came up from 17th place, USA's Jonathan Summerton and Australia's John Martin.
"Things have been better than the last couple of races as we have come in the top 10 in the practice session," said Karthikeyan, who put in 21 laps. "I am confident that we can improve tomorrow and the qualifying is most important. I got a good feel of the circuit and there are a few changes from last year. We need to use a lot of the kerbs. We conserved the tyres a little as we have to use the same tyres tomorrow too. But in case it rains, all the rubber that has collected on the track today will be washed away."
The tight and narrow street circuit posed its own set of challenges with the Czech Republic's Jozef Kral, Mexico's David Garza's car finding the concrete wall in the morning. That automatically meant the team had to hurry up and get the spare car ready. In the afternoon, Indonesia's Satrio Hermanto crashed into the wall and the practice session was stopped with 3:31 minutes left. These two were apart from many other smaller incidents on the day.
Earlier, Parthiva Sureshwaren took the car out in the first practice session for rookie drivers in the morning. His fastest times in the first two halves of the morning practice session were 1:24.101 (16th fastest) and 1:24.334 (17th fastest) but they were only controlled test runs. Germany's Michael Ammermuller (1:19.390) and Switzerland's Marcel Fassler (1:21.006) topped the charts in the morning.
"The car is good and the testing session was rather satisfying. I just got a feel of the car in the first session. I was told not to push as obviously a mistake can prove to be costly for the team. The track is a little bumpy and our physical condition needs to be good,” said Sureshwaran.
Qualifying times (afternoon session, top eight): The Netherlands (Jeroen Bleekmolen, 1:18.738) 1; Germany (Michael Ammenmuler, 1:19.051) 2; Great Britain (Oliver Jarvis, 1:19.207) 3; Switzerland (Neel Jani, 1:19.303) 4; USA (Jonathan Summerton, 1:19.525) 5; South Africa (Adrian Zaugg, 1:19.567) 6; Australia (John Martin, 1:19.579) 7; India (Narain Karthikeyan, 1:19.580) 8.