gap calls seem to consume a lot of time

edit

I am trying to migrate some code from GAP to sage, and the overhead for calls to GAP procedures is enormous. Here is an example:

----------------------------------------------------------------------
| Sage Version 4.6.2, Release Date: 2011-02-25                       |
| Type notebook() for the GUI, and license() for information.        |
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sage: def test1():
....:     for x in xrange(100): gap.eval('G:=Group([(1,2,3)])')
....:     
sage: def test2():
....:     gap.eval('for x in [1..100] do G:=Group([(1,2,3)]);od')
....:     
sage: timeit('test1()')
5 loops, best of 3: 810 ms per loop
sage: timeit('test2()')
25 loops, best of 3: 12.6 ms per loop

Is there anything I am doing wrong?

I tried some profiling, which indicated that most of the time is consumed by "select.select".

Any help will be most welcome.