It was a debut for both track and driver: Antonio Giovinazzi (PREMA Racing) scored his first GP2 pole position in the first qualifying session on Azerbaijani soil. Nobuharu Matsushita put his ART GP car on the second place of tomorrow’s starting grid, and the team mate of the Japanese, Sergey Sirotkin, will start the first GP2 Feature race in Baku from third place.
The session was postponed due to problems with the curbs of the circuit, and the lights went green about four hours later than originally planned. Under a cloudy sky and with 9°C less than at midday, all drivers except RUSSIAN TIME’s Raffaele Marciello left the pit lane as soon as the lights went green. Only the Italian remained behind and waited a few minutes to have a clear track for his flying lap.
It was Oliver Rowland who set the first benchmark laptime of 1:54.156, but he was immediately beaten by Mastushita. Giovinazzi was the first man to dip under the 1:54 minute barrier and claimed the top spot for the first time in this session until Sergio Canamasas (Carlin) snatched the top spot from the Italian. Matsushita bettered his own laptime as well to push the Italian down to third place.
About 10 minutes into the session, the other PREMA Racing driver, Pierre Gasly, had his moment in the spotlight: the Frenchman dashed up to provisional pole position with a laptime of 1:52.929, however, his team mate stole the spotlight soon afterwards, going just three hundredths of a second faster than Gasly.
A short red flag interrupted the session: Both Daniel de Jong and Philo Paz Armand had gone off at Turn 3, but while the Dutchman was able to move his MP Motorsport car back onto the race track, the Indonesian was not so lucky. In the narrow run-off area, Armand was unable to rejoin the track and the stranded Trident car had to be recovered by the marshals.
The usual mid-session set-up and tyre changes were still in full swing when the track went live again, and it remained quiet for a few minutes until Nabil Jeffri and Gustav Malja were the first ones to test the waters on fresh tyres. The top drivers rejoined the session with 14 minutes left to run, and soon afterwards the fight for the pole position started again.
With ten minutes on the clock Sirotkin claimed the top spot, while Alex Lynn (DAMS) and Jordan King (Racing Engineering) jumped up to fourth and sixth place, respectively. Giovinazzi then reclaimed the provisional pole position, however, Matsushita edged past the Italian by only a hair’s breadth.
With five minutes left to run, Giovinazzi wrestled past the ART GP driver again, and claimed the pole position for good with a laptime of 1:51.752. The ART GP duo finished the session in second and third place ahead of Marciello and Luca Ghiotto (Trident), who had moved up to fifth place in the dying minutes of the session. Rowland was classified in sixth place ahead of Marvin Kirchhöfer (Carlin) and Gasly. Championship leader Norman Nato (Racing Engineering) will start tomorrow’s race from ninth place ahead of Canamanas.
