Baku GP2: Giovinazzi gets first pole in postponed qualifying

The Italian secured new-for-2016 outfit Prema Racing's second pole in just three attempts, after Pierre Gasly took the top spot on the grid in the Barcelona season opener.

Originally set to be held before second Formula 1 practice, the session was postponed to the end of the day due to kerb issues at Turn 2.

Sergio Canamasas took the lead following the first representative laptimes, immediately beating the practice benchmark set by Norman Nato by almost two seconds.

However, the Spaniard made a small mistake on his following flyer, and failed to improve with first Gasly and then Giovinazzi both demoting him.

The running was then red-flagged after both Daniel De Jong and Philo Paz Armand ran off at Turn 3, and the latter failed to turn his car around to rejoin the track.

Despite going eight tenths quicker, Giovinazzi soon dropped down to second behind ART driver Nobuharu Matsushita once the session resumed.

The FIA F3 convert fought back to edge the Japanese out with just three minutes to go, the latter narrowly escaping contact with the wall and pitting before the end of the session.

The duo, separated by less than a tenth, remained unrivalled for the rest of the session to line up on the front row in Saturday's feature race.

ART's second driver Sergey Sirotkin was seven tenths down in third, followed by Italian duo Raffaele Marciello (Russian Time) and Luca Ghiotto (Trident).

Reigning Formula Renault 3.5 champion Oliver Rowland (MP) and GP3 graduate Marvin Kirchhofer (Carlin) took sixth and seventh respectively, beating Gasly by 0.021s and 0.004s.

Racing Engineering's Nato and Canamasas (Carlin) completed the top 10.

Full times

Pos.	Driver	Team	Gap
1	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Racing	1:51.752
2	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	1:51.841
3	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	1:52.532
4	Raffaele Marciello	Russian Time	1:52.555
5	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	1:52.691
6	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	1:52.739
7	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	1:52.756
8	Pierre Gasly	Prema Racing	1:52.760
9	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	1:52.929
10	Sergio Canamasas	Carlin	1:52.962
11	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	1:52.962
12	Artem Markelov	Russian Time	1:53.040
13	Alex Lynn	DAMS	1:53.092
14	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1:53.226
15	Mitch Evans	Campos	1:53.401
16	Arthur Pic	Rapax	1:53.702
17	Daniel De Jong	MP Motorsport	1:54.000
18	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden	1:54.034
19	Gustav Malja	Rapax	1:54.213
20	Sean Gelael	Campos	1:54.717
21	Nabil Jeffri	Arden	1:55.333
22	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	1:57.692