Copyright GP2 Media Services
Stoffel Vandoorne is back on pole position for the fourth round in Austria. Alongside him will be his team mate Nobuharu Matsushita, making it the second front row lockout for the French squad after the first round of the season in Bahrain. Pierre Gasly will start tomorrow’s Feature race from third place, with Sergey Sirotkin, who was fastest in the free practice session ealier, alongside him.
The rain showers that were predicted for the afternoon steered clear of the Red Bull Ring, and as 24 GP2 cars (Lazarus’ Zoel Amberg was unable to take part in the session) left the pit lane for the qualifying session, the sun began to peek through the clouds.
Like in this morning’s practice session, it was again Rapax’s Sergey Sirotkin who set the first competitive laptime of 1:15.296. However, Vandoorne bettering the Russian’s time just minutes later, a session-long battle for pole position kicked off. Pierre Gasly and Raffaele Marciello went on their own flying laps and while the DAMS driver jumped up to third place, the Trident man had his promising lap ruined by traffic.
Racing Engineering’s Alexander Rossi was the first one to return to the pit lane with damage to his car running over a kerb, and the others followed suit to pit for fresh rubber as usual. Outfitted with new Pirelli tyres, Pierre Gasly led the way for the final part of the session. As the tyres were up to the right temperature, the lap times started to tumble down again in the last five minutes of the session: Alex Lynn moved up to fifth place, while his team mate Gasly had the third place taken form him by Russian Time’s Mitch Evans. Then it was Vandoorne’s time to shine: The Belgian snatched the top spot from Sirotkin with a lap time of 1:14.174 and would remain unbeaten until the end of the session, while Sirotkin himself was unable to improve and watched from the pits as he was pushed down the order by Matsushita and Gasly to finish the session in fourth place. Rio Haryanto will start from fifth place alongside Raffaele Marciello. Nick Yelloly finished the session in seventh place ahead of Jordan King, however, as King had received a three place grid penalty, he will be demoted to eleventh on the starting grid for tomorrow’s Feature race. This means that Arthur Pic, who had jumped up to ninth place just as the checkered flag fell, will start the Feature race from eighth place. Alex Lynn will line up in ninth place on the grid alongside Mitch Evans.
