Gasly takes GP2 pole position at returned Malaysian round
Pierre Gasly has taken his seventh pole position for the first Malaysian GP2 race since 2013. It was a tight fight between teammate Antonio Giovinazzi and the Frenchman, but due to an incident-filled session, no one was able to improve on their original set times. Raffaele Marciello finished off the top three.
It was a battle of the Prema Racing drivers from the start as, after the first set of flying laps, Gasly’s advantage was only 0.082. To try and extend his advantage, Gasly opted to run a second lap on his Medium tyres but the tyres were not up for the job. He lost the car going over the kerbs at Turn 5, spinning off and nearly beaching his Prema car into the gravel. Ironically Turn 5 is one of the corners that was flattened out in the Malaysian track resurface, so this could have highlighted the heavy degradation of the tyres around the hot Sepang Circuit.
Everyone then took to the pits for the expected lull in action as teams changed tyres and refuelled the car. Gustav Malja tried a different tactic as he took to the track in the gap to optimise the lack of traffic and be able to push as hard as he liked. This tactic has worked for others in the past, but sadly it did not for Malja. He picked up some understeer, with the rear of the car flicking out at Turn 2 and kicking up a lot of dust. This ruined his chances of improving his time and he returned to the pits, still P13.
The rest of the grid then took to the track, ready for their final runs. When Mitch Evans started his flyer, his Campos car suffered a brake failure. The rear of the car shot round, spinning Evans off the track and into the tyre barrier on the outside of Turn 1. This ended the Kiwi’s session but also brought out the red flag as the barrier needed to be repaired. All of the warming up and the beginning of new laps which the rest of the field had started were wasted as the field poured back into the pits.
With about three and a half minutes left on the clock, the big discussion down the grid was whether or not it was worth going out for another try. A lot of the cars opted to, knowing that they would not get the optimum performance out of the tyres but happy to chase any time possible. One of those drivers was Alex Lynn who was trying to improve from sixth. He put in a personal best in the first sector, bringing him closer to the Premas at the front but a small off line moment in the middle sector saw him pick up understeer and lose too much time to challenge for a better position. He finished the session sixth.
A lot of drivers were hoping to improve as the clock ticked down, but a mistake from Nobuharu Matsushita saw an end to everyone’s hope. He spun the car off track just before the first long straight and caused a yellow flag, meaning that no one behind could improve on their times. This was most disappointing for Giovinazzi as he was going faster than his teammate, trying to chase down his third pole position, while Gasly had been unable to improve.
After all the action of the session, the grid had been formed as the times were set with 17 minutes left on the clock (as no one managed to improve from this point). Behind Marciello, Sergey Sirotkin lines up fourth, with Matsushita fifth ahead of Lynn. Norman Nato led his Racing Engineering teammate Jordan King across the line for seventh and eighth, and Oliver Rowland and Artem Markelov finished off the top ten.