Sepang GP2: Gasly survives early spin, tops red-flagged qualifying

Gasly took the lead with his first flyer, setting a 1m42.181s, and then narrowly avoided an early exit from the session after a spin at Turn 12.

He slid into the gravel but managed to rejoin the track without getting beached.

As the field started its second stint following the usual pitstops, Mitch Evans crashed out due to a brake failure, bringing out the red flag before anyone could have improved.

The session was restarted with a bit more than three minutes left on the clock but most of the late flyers were ruined due to Nobuharu Matsushita going off into the gravel and bringing out yellow flags.

Giovinazzi, who set personal best first and second sectors before having to slow down, had to settle for second, eight hundredths behind Gasly.

Prema's main title rivals Raffaele Marciello and Sergey Sirotkin will fill the second row ahead of Matsushita.

DAMS driver Alex Lynn and Racing Engineering duo Norman Nato and Jordan King completed the top eight ahead of Oliver Rowland and Artem Markelov.

GP2 returnee Johnny Cecotto took 15th, 1.2s slower than Gasly.

Qualifying results

Cla	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	Pierre Gasly	Prema Powerteam	1'42.181
2	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Powerteam	1'42.263	0.082
3	Raffaele Marciello	RUSSIAN TIME	1'42.526	0.345
4	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	1'42.528	0.347
5	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	1'42.623	0.442
6	Alex Lynn	DAMS	1'42.775	0.594
7	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	1'42.800	0.619
8	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	1'42.851	0.670
9	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	1'42.902	0.721
10	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	1'42.934	0.753
11	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	1'42.934	0.753
12	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1'43.130	0.949
13	Gustav Malja	Rapax	1'43.224	1.043
14	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	1'43.290	1.109
15	Johnny Cecotto	Rapax	1'43.385	1.204
16	Mitch Evans	Campos Racing	1'43.606	1.425
17	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	1'43.761	1.580
18	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	1'43.965	1.784
19	Sergio Canamasas	Carlin	1'43.977	1.796
20	Sean Gelael	Campos Racing	1'44.087	1.906
21	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	1'44.578	2.397