Pierre Gasly claimed the top spot on the second day of testing with the fastest laptime of the day, a 1:27.703 set in the afternoon session of GP2’s pre-season test in Catalonia. The PREMA Racing driver had already set the second-fastest laptime on the opening day. Second-fastest man of today was Sergey Sirotkin with the best time of the morning session, a 1:27.971.
It remained chilly at the Circuit de Catalunya, however, today the sun shone on the GP2 cars as the session opened. Gasly and Status Grand Prix’s Meindert van Buuren opened the session, and it was Gasly too who set the pace in the early stage of the session, However, running on the hardest tyre compound, his time was beaten soon afterwards as Jordan King improved and claimed the top spot. Then, a red flag brought the session to a halt after Antonio Giovinazzi had stopped his PREMA Racing machine on the track.
When the session continued, it was Raffaele Marciello’s moment: The Russian Time driver was the first man to lap the Circuit de Catalunya faster than one minute and 30 seconds, however, his time at the top was cut short by ART GP’s Nobuharu Matsushita who claimed the top honours with a laptime below even one minute and 29 seconds.
Matsushita’s team mate Sirotkin pushed even further, and with two hours still left to run he parked his car on the top spot with a laptime of 1:27.971 and would remain there until the chequered flag. Behind the Russian, Gasly finished in second place after demoting King to third place in the last hour of the session. Norman Nato (Racing Engineering), Marciello, Mitch Evans (Campos Racing), the Carlin duo of Rene Binder and Marvin Kirchhöfer, Artem Markelov (Russian Time), and Luca Ghiotto (Trident) complete the top ten of the morning session.
MP Motorsport’s Oliver Rowland was the pace setter in the beginning of the afternoon session with a laptime of 1.29.922, before being beaten by 0.8 seconds by Antonio Giovinazzi. After the first hour, the session was interrupted twice: First it was Markelov who ended up in the gravel trap of turn five, shortly afterwards Sean Gelael came to a halt in the same place.
When the track went live again, King made another effort to claim the top spot with a time of 1:28.779. Towards the end of the session, the softer compound tyres made their appearance, and Gasly blasted his way to a laptime of 1:27.708, beating King by over one second. The two remained on top until the end of the session. Behind them, Rapax driver Arthur Pic was third-fastest, followed by Giovinazzi. The MP Motorsport team mates Daniel de Jong and Oliver Rowland finished in fifth and sixth place ahead of Binder, Arden’s GP2 debutant Jimmy Eriksson, Rapax’s Gustav Malja, and finally Ghiotto in tenth place.
