Barcelona GP2: Gasly beats Nato for first pole of 2016

It was Gasly's third consecutive pole in the series and his fourth from the last five qualifying sessions.

While spots of rain fell at the start of the 30-minute session, conditions were never bad enough to warrant anything other than the use of slick tyres, with the majority of runners leaving it late to set their best times.

Having set the pace in practice, Prema driver Gasly led the field after the opening runs on a 1m28.795s, holding an advantage of three tenths over nearest challenger Oliver Rowland.

But Sergey Sirotkin chose to make his second run earlier than the rest of the frontrunners, appearing to gamble on more rain later in the session, duly taking the top spot with a 1m28.655s.

The Russian’s reign atop the timesheets was not to last, however, as the rain stayed away, Alex Lynn grabbing provisional pole on a 1m28.458s with six minutes to go, only to be promptly beaten by Nato by two tenths.

But Gasly reasserted his authority shortly afterwards with a 1m27.807s, a full 0.464s up on Racing Engineering driver Nato.

Lynn and DAMS teammate Nicholas Latifi make up the second row, with Sirotkin demoted to fifth in the final reckoning ahead of Rapax rookie Gustav Malja, Rowland and Nobuharu Matsushita – who adopted a similar strategy to fellow ART driver Sirotkin, only to be blocked towards the end of his lap.

Completing the top 10 were Artem Markelov and Luca Ghiotto, with Gasly’s Prema teammate Antonio Giovinazzi taking 11th on the grid for his series debut.

Mitch Evans, meanwhile, had a dismal time on his first outing with Campos, qualifying down in 18th place and 1.6s off the pace of Gasly.

Qualifying results

Pos.	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	Pierre Gasly	Prema Racing	1:27.807
2	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	1:28.271	0.464
3	Alex Lynn	DAMS	1:28.458	0.651
4	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1:28.563	0.756
5	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	1:28.655	0.848
6	Gustav Malja	Rapax	1:28.695	0.888
7	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	1:28.807	1.000
8	Artem Markelov	Russian Time	1:29.129	1.322
9	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	1:29.143	1.336
10	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Racing	1:29.163	1.356
11	Nobuharu Matsushita*	ART Grand Prix	1:29.128	1.321
12	Raffaele Marciello	Russian Time	1:29.274	1.467
13	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	1:29.322	1.515
14	Arthur Pic	Rapax	1:29.385	1.578
15	Sergio Canamasas	Carlin	1:29.397	1.590
16	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	1:29.440	1.633
17	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	1:29.464	1.657
18	Mitch Evans	Pertamina Campos Racing	1:29.478	1.671
19	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden International	1:29.942	2.135
20	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	1:30.254	2.447
21	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	1:30.609	2.802
22	Sean Gelael*	Pertamina Campos Racing	1:30.304	2.497

*Matsushita and Sean Gelael both received 3-place grid penalties for impeding other drivers and the duo will start from 11th and the pit lane respectively.