Gasly Takes Pole at Yas Marina

Pierre Gasly took his third pole in four races in the final qualifying session of the 2015 season. Just as he had in free practice, he set the pace of the session on his first flying lap, with no one managing to improve to a better time over the thirty-minute session. 2015 champion Stoffel Vandoorne held a tight battle with the Frenchman but it wasn’t enough and he had to settle for second position on the grid. Russian Time’s Mitch Evans rounded off the top three.

Vandoorne initially locked up into turn one on his first flying time, setting him at the bottom of the timesheets as the rest of the field set their lap times. But the Belgian’s out-of-place position was soon rectified as he jumped to P2 on his second flyer, just two-tenths off provisional pole sitter Gasly. The field pitted for mid-session tyre change and set-up tweaks and were lead back into action by Alex Lynn. With a clear track the British driver was able to get within 0.035 seconds from his teammate, making it a DAMS 1-2.

Gasly improved again to confirm his pole position, with Vandoorne’s improvement not enough to knock him from the top spot, only a mere 0.097 in it. Mitch Evans knocked down Lynn to P4 as the Kiwi was the last to improve on his final time, jumping to third. Trident’s Raffaele Marciello was six tenths off of pole sitter Gasly, managing to snatch fifth from Rio Haryanto by ten hundreths of a second. Racing Engineering duo Alex Rossi and Jordan King line up seventh and eighth respectively, with Nobuharu Matsushita and Artem Markelov finishing off the top ten.

Duos of teammates filled out the top ten, but it was Pierre Gasly who was faster than the rest. Tomorrow’s race begins at 2:35pm GMT where we shall see if Gasly can convert this pole into a win or if it will be a repeat of Bahrain and see him falling back down the grid. Join us then to see who will win the final feature race of the 2015 season.

(Image: www.gp2series.com)

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