Copyright GP2 Media Services
DAMS driver Pierre Gasly was fastest in the last session of testing before the start of the 2015 GP2 season.
The final sessions took place under clear skies, and the drivers used the morning to practice fast laps on their soft tyre compunds. After ART’s Stoffel Vandoorne headed out first, the laptimes began to tumble rapidly. Marco Sorensen was the fastest man in the early stage of the session, afterwards Mitch Evans, Nathanael Berthon, Jordan King, and Pierre Gasly took their turns at the top of the time sheet.
Trident driver Raffaele Marciello was the first man to break the 1m40s barrier, 7 hundredths of a second faster than the DAMS driver. Vandoorne then took the top spot with a laptime of 1:39.696 after finding a bit of clean air in an otherwise busy session, but around the one hour mark Gasly reclaimed the top spot, beating the Belgian by one hundredth of a second.
During the remainder of the session the teams practiced race simulations and worked on their set-up and Gasly stayed on top of the timesheets until the end of the session ahead of Vandoorne, Evans, Alexander Rossi, and Marciello.
The afternoon session was dedicated to race simulations and work on the set-up as well, which meant that the time of Gasly’s run in the morning remained unbeaten. Norman Nato was fastest in the early stage of the session with a laptime of 1:41.97. With 30 minutes left to run, the Frenchman caused the first and only red flag of the day as is car caught fire and stopped on track. Afterwards, Nigel Melker claimed the top spot with a laptime of 1:41.566, and Sergey Sirotkin’s run brought him up to P2, 7 hundredths behind the Dutchman. In the dying minutes of the session, Rio Hayranto and Gasly jumped up to P3 and P4 respectively to finish the final day of testing ahead of Nato.
The 2015 GP2 season will start on April 17th at the Sakhir international Circuit in Bahrain.
