Baku GP2: Nato tops practice amid mass yellow flags

With cars running in anger at the venue for the first time ever, there were concerns about the possibility of heavy shunts - but while those were alleviated for the moment, it was far from a clean run.

In fact, the virtual safety car arrived less than five minutes into the 45-minute session, with Carlin's Sergio Canamasas spinning around at Turn 16. The Spaniard, however, got back underway in virtually no time.

As waved yellows continued popping up all over the track, there was a worrying moment as Jordan King opted to go into the run-off at Turn 15 - and had to maneuver past a recovery vehicle that had been parked there. The truck would be removed shortly thereafter, its exit necessitating another VSC.

By that point, the timesheets showed a Russian Time 1-2, Raffaele Marciello leading Monaco race winner Artem Markelov.

However, Prema driver Antonio Giovinazzi would soon assume the top spot, eventually lowering the benchmark to a 1m55.519s.

With the session approaching its final minutes, Marciello's run would come to a premature end at Turn 15 - and that corner would also see a Gustav Malja off with less than five minutes to go, necessitating the third appearance of the virtual safety car.

Between the two events, Norman Nato had vaulted to the top of the timesheets at a 1m55.394s - and with the final virtual safety car remaining until the session's end, his time would stand unopposed.

Giovinazzi settled for second, ahead of Sergey Sirotkin, whose ART teammate Nobuharu Matsushita was among those to have abandoned their cars in the run-off.

Pierre Gasly was fourth, with rookies Oliver Rowland and Luca Ghiotto making up the top six.

King, Arthur Pic, Marciello and Canamasas made up the top 10.

Practice results

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	1'55.394
2	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Powerteam	1'55.719	0.325
3	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	1'56.093	0.699
4	Pierre Gasly	Prema Powerteam	1'56.464	1.070
5	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	1'56.871	1.477
6	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	1'57.059	1.665
7	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	1'57.091	1.697
8	Arthur Pic	Rapax	1'57.438	2.044
9	Raffaele Marciello	RUSSIAN TIME	1'57.464	2.070
10	Sergio Canamasas	Carlin	1'57.538	2.144
11	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	1'57.585	2.191
12	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	1'57.587	2.193
13	Mitch Evans	Pertamina Campos Racing	1'57.799	2.405
14	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1'58.397	3.003
15	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	1'58.432	3.038
16	Gustav Malja	Rapax	1'58.808	3.414
17	Alex Lynn	DAMS	1'59.723	4.329
18	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	1'59.757	4.363
19	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden International	2'00.493	5.099
20	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	2'00.561	5.167
21	Sean Gelael	Pertamina Campos Racing	2'00.769	5.375
22	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	2'01.794	6.400