Bahrain GP2: Rossi leads ultra-tight practice session

DAMS's Pierre Gasly set early pace on 1m41.230s, but this mark was eclipsed by Racing Engineering driver Rossi’s 1m41.180s later in the session.

Champion elect Stoffel Vandoorne – who put the title out of Rossi’s reach in Russia – was second fastest for ART Grand Prix, just 0.033s slower. That time was 0.05s quicker than Gasly’s, which stood for third.

The top four was covered by 0.073s, with Vandoorne’s ART teammate Nobuharu Matsushita fourth quickest.

Sergey Sirotkin was fifth fastest for Rapax on 1m41.345s, ahead of Raffaele Marciello, Alex Lynn and Jordan King.

Arthur Pic and Rio Haryanto rounded out the top 10.

Qualifying takes place at 1420 local time.

Practice times:

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time	Delay
1	Alexander Rossi	Racing Engineering	1'41.180
2	Stoffel Vandoorne	ART Grand Prix	1'41.213	0.033
3	Pierre Gasly	DAMS	1'41.230	0.050
4	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	1'41.253	0.073
5	Sergey Sirotkin	Rapax	1'41.345	0.165
6	Raffaele Marciello	Trident	1'41.427	0.247
7	Alex Lynn	DAMS	1'41.507	0.327
8	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	1'41.529	0.349
9	Arthur Pic	Campos Racing	1'41.535	0.355
10	Rio Haryanto	Campos Racing	1'41.610	0.430
11	Norman Nato	Arden International	1'41.688	0.508
12	Rene Binder	MP Motorsport	1'41.729	0.549
13	Sergio Canamasas	Daiko Team Lazarus	1'41.747	0.567
14	Artem Markelov	Russian Time	1'41.849	0.669
15	Mitch Evans	Russian Time	1'41.943	0.763
16	Marlon Stockinger	Status Grand Prix	1'42.006	0.826
17	Nathanael Berthon	Daiko Team Lazarus	1'42.150	0.970
18	Andre Negrao	Arden International	1'42.173	0.993
19	Dean Stoneman	Carlin	1'42.453	1.273
20	Nicholas Latifi	MP Motorsport	1'42.523	1.343
21	Daniel de Jong	Trident	1'42.864	1.684
22	Gustav Malja	Rapax	1'43.302	2.122
23	Oliver Rowland	Status Grand Prix	1'43.342	2.162
24	Sean Gelael	Carlin	1'44.400	3.220