Ocon Takes Pole And Championship Lead

After last weekend’s round the championship has never been closer. Ocon took the lead in the title race but by the end of the weekend Ghiotto was back in front by a small margin of two points. With only two races left and forty-four points the maximum either one of them can get it’s coming down to the wire in the races in Abu Dhabi. Esteban Ocon took first blood, taking pole position and claiming a mere two-point lead in the championship standings. Just as he had in Bahrain last week, Ocon put in the performance he needed to take the lead of the championship off title-contender Luca Ghiotto. Ghiotto will start P4 in tomorrow’s first race, with Kevin Ceccon and Marvin Kirchhöfer splitting the two.

The session was extremely tight, with Ghiotto looking to have the advantage from to start as he led the field out early. However the track was constantly improving and the lap times continued to get quicker as the thirty-minute session drew to a close. Ghiotto and his Trident teammates opted for an odd strategy, pitting after their installation laps in a bid to get some clear track time. The tactic paid off as Ghiotto leapt to the top of the time board, teammate Artur Janosz only just missing out on making it a provisional Trident 1-2.

But the rest of the field weren’t done and as Ghiotto dropped into the pits for a quick set-up tweaks Ceccon made all his hard work seem pointless as he demoted him almost instantly down to P2. Ghiotto didn’t waste any time on his pit stop, getting back on the track as soon as possible but no matter how hard he pushed he couldn’t close the gap between him and the front-runners. The session got worse for Ghiotto as Kirchhöfer set an astonishing lap bringing him only 0.042 seconds off Ceccon’s pole time.

Things would have stayed in Ghiotto’s favour had have finished with this result, and with the session nearly over it looked like that might be the case. He would have started with Ocon beside him and still have been leading the championship as the first race started, but an overwhelming effort from the Frenchman saw him clinching pole position in his final push after the chequered flag had dropped, a significantly small 0.016 ahead of Ceccon’s time. Eriksson qualified fifth fastest, with Bernstorff, Fuoco, Palou, Parry and Janosz rounding off the top ten.

The 18-lap first race will get underway at 8:25am GMT time where Ocon will be looking to convert his well-fought for pole position into a race victory and extend the two-point lead he now has in the championship battle. With the constructor’s title having being clenched last time out, it is only the driver’s to be fought over this weekend. It can be assumed that Ocon and Ghiotto’s teammates will be looking out to help as much as they can to see their teammate crowned the 2015 GP3 World Champion.

(Image: www.gp3series.com)

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