Pierre Gasly took his second consecutive feature race pole position after setting the fastest time in an ultra-tight qualifying session in Abu Dhabi on Saturday.
The DAMS driver set a time of 1:47.769 to finish the session 0.097 ahead of his nearest challengers Stoffel Vandoorne and Mitch Evans. Alexander Rossi qualified seventh.
After topping the times in practice on Friday, Frenchman Gasly was quick to topple the early pace of Racing Engineering team-mates Rossi and Jordan King with a time of 1:48.014.
After an initial exploratory lap, series champion Vandoorne’s first flying lap was enough to put him second behind Gasly, some 0.2s off the pace.
Having completed their first runs, the whole field returned to the pits for fresh Pirelli rubber.
Once back out on track, there was an improvement from Gasly’s team-mate Alex Lynn who set the fastest middle sector to go second by just 0.035s, demoting Vandoorne to third. Vandoorne then improved to usurp Lynn but missed out on pole by a mere 0.097s.
But that would be it for the Belgian who elected to give up on an attempt at pole, instead opting to return to the pits and get out the car with 90 seconds left on the clock.
A late flash of speed from Evans saw him jump past Lynn to grab third in the dying seconds, leaving Gasly to claim his third GP2 career pole.
Just one second separated the top 11 drivers with the top five covered by a quarter of a second.
However, it was yet more disappointment for Rossi as he couldn’t match the pace of the in-form Gasly and season-long title rival Vandoorne. He eventually wound up seventh, nearly a full second down on pole.
