Abu Dhabi GP2: Gasly heads Lynn, Giovinazzi in final practice

Gasly, regarded by many as a Yas Marina specialist, topped the timesheets with a 1m50.940s lap, ending up some three seconds off his 2015 pole benchmark as practice running was limited to the medium tyre.

The lead in the session early on belonged to ART's Nobuharu Matsushita, the Japanese driver recording three session-best times and eventually ending up at 1m51.149s.

But it was Gasly who reigned heading into the halfway point of the 45-minute session, the Red Bull junior stringing together a 1m51.096s.

After making a visit to pitlane, neither Gasly, nor Matsushita could improve on their earlier times right away, with Giovinazzi overhauling both, the championship leader moving up at 1m51.096s.

He returned to the pits, as did Matsushita, whereas Gasly stayed out for another push lap, clocking in a 1m50.940s with 10 minutes left on the clock.

Having reclaimed the top spot, Gasly opted against a flying lap run in the dying minutes of the session. Giovinazzi had two more push laps late on, but was two tenths off on both occasions – and was demoted to third place by Gasly's former teammate Alex Lynn, who came up just 0.062s short of the pacesetter's best lap.

Matsushita rounded out an ultra-close top four – and was a full half a second up on fifth-placed Norman Nato.

Oliver Rowland and Nato's teammate Jordan King followed, ahead of GP2's most experienced driver Johnny Cecotto, Sergey Sirotkin and Nicholas Latifi.

Raffaele Marciello, the only driver besides Gasly and Giovinazzi with a mathematical shot at the title, was 11^th.

Of the debutants, Emil Bernstorff was 1.8s off in 16^th, leading his Arden teammate, while Louis Deletraz was 21^st.

Albeit many a driver explored the various run-off areas of the track, it was a fairly incident-free session otherwise, the only exceptions coming with Mitch Evans pulling over out of Turn 7 early on and Sergio Canamasas avoiding a stray cat in the closing minutes.

Practice results

Pos.	#	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap
1	21	Pierre Gasly	Prema Powerteam	16	1'50.940
2	5	Alex Lynn	DAMS	18	1'51.002	0.062
3	20	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Powerteam	19	1'51.067	0.127
4	1	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	19	1'51.149	0.209
5	3	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	17	1'51.687	0.747
6	22	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	18	1'51.700	0.760
7	4	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	16	1'51.795	0.855
8	12	Johnny Cecotto	Rapax	18	1'51.873	0.933
9	2	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	17	1'51.892	0.952
10	6	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	18	1'51.964	1.024
11	9	Raffaele Marciello	RUSSIAN TIME	17	1'52.005	1.065
12	10	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	17	1'52.281	1.341
13	18	Sergio Canamasas	Carlin	17	1'52.385	1.445
14	7	Mitch Evans	Campos Racing	7	1'52.477	1.537
15	15	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	17	1'52.664	1.724
16	25	Emil Bernstorff	Arden International	20	1'52.751	1.811
17	11	Gustav Malja	Rapax	19	1'52.762	1.822
18	23	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	17	1'52.987	2.047
19	8	Sean Gelael	Campos Racing	15	1'53.077	2.137
20	24	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	16	1'53.185	2.245
21	19	Louis Deletraz	Carlin	17	1'53.650	2.710
22	14	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	18	1'53.808	2.868