Barcelona GP2: Gasly heads Lynn in season-opening practice
Red Bull protege Pierre Gasly led his former teammate Alex Lynn in the first practice session of the 2016 GP2 campaign at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.
Photo by: GP2 Media Service
Lynn, a Williams F1 test driver, immediately put his DAMS Dallara GP2/11 below last year's Friday benchmark at the track with a 1m29.959s at the start of the session.
However, Gasly, who had switched from DAMS to Prema, responded immediately to go top in the Italian team's first in-season session in GP2.
Gasly's time was a 1m29.519 despite the Frenchman having a serious moment of oversteer during the lap, while Lynn came up a tenth short with his next effort.
The top two was settled then and there as, for the rest of the 45-minute session, nobody would come even close to demoting the duo.
Russian Time's Artem Markelov was an impressive third, three tenths behind Gasly, with Norman Nato in fourth for Racing Engineering and reigning champion Stoffel Vandoorne's ART successor Sergey Sirotkin taking fifth.
It was sixth for Nato's teammate Jordan King, the Manor driver coming up just 0.002s short of dipping into the 1m29s margin.
Prema rookie Antonio Giovinazzi was seventh, ahead of Nobuharu Matsushita, the Honda protege having stalled on pitlane exit at the very start of the session.
Rookies Oliver Rowland and Marvin Kirchhofer made up the top 10 for MP Motorsport and Carlin respectively.
Session results
Pos. | Driver | Team | Time | Gap |
1 | Pierre Gasly | Prema Racing | 1:29.519 | |
2 | Alex Lynn | DAMS | 1:29.623 | 0.104 |
3 | Artem Markelov | Russian Time | 1:29.860 | 0.341 |
4 | Norman Nato | Racing Engineering | 1:29.874 | 0.355 |
5 | Sergey Sirotkin | ART Grand Prix | 1:29.960 | 0.441 |
6 | Jordan King | Racing Engineering | 1:30.001 | 0.482 |
7 | Antonio Giovinazzi | Prema Racing | 1:30.057 | 0.538 |
8 | Nobuharu Matsushita | ART Grand Prix | 1:30.310 | 0.791 |
9 | Oliver Rowland | MP Motorsport | 1:30.345 | 0.826 |
10 | Marvin Kirchhofer | Carlin | 1:30.470 | 0.951 |
11 | Nicholas Latifi | DAMS | 1:30.542 | 1.023 |
12 | Luca Ghiotto | Trident | 1:30.556 | 1.037 |
13 | Raffaele Marciello | Russian Time | 1:30.573 | 1.054 |
14 | Daniel de Jong | MP Motorsport | 1:30.662 | 1.143 |
15 | Mitch Evans | Pertamina Campos Racing | 1:30.720 | 1.201 |
16 | Arthur Pic | Rapax | 1:30.722 | 1.203 |
17 | Jimmy Eriksson | Arden International | 1:30.742 | 1.223 |
18 | Gustav Malja | Rapax | 1:30.823 | 1.304 |
19 | Sergio Canamasas | Carlin | 1:31.015 | 1.496 |
20 | Sean Gelael | Pertamina Campos Racing | 1:31.304 | 1.785 |
21 | Nabil Jeffri | Arden International | 1:31.577 | 2.058 |
22 | Philo Paz Armand | Trident | 1:32.803 | 3.284 |
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