Hockenheim GP2: Sirotkin beats Gasly to pole by 0.016s

Sirotkin narrowly headed Prema duo Gasly and Antonio Giovinazzi after the first set of representative times but dropped outside the top five by the time he pitted.

Giovinazzi lowered the benchmark by half a second with his next flyer but Raffaele Marciello demoted him to second before stopping.

Once back on track, Marciello failed to improve with his first attempt and soon fell behind Gasly, who managed to take the lead despite locking up at Sachs while trying to pass Gustav Malja, the Swede running a slow lap.

The Frenchman went even quicker by three hundredths next time around but his time wasn't enough to stay ahead as Sirotkin edged him out by 0.016s.

With a couple of minutes still remaining on the clock, Gasly and Marciello both already pitted and couldn't improve as a result.

Sirotkin's time of 1m22.193s went unbeaten for the rest of the session, the Russian taking his third pole of the season.

Gasly had to settle for second as the second row will be filled by Italian duo Marciello and Giovinazzi.

Britons Oliver Rowland and Alex Lynn took fifth and sixth respectively, separated by just nine thousandths.

Norman Nato was seventh, closely followed by Nicholas Latifi, Racing Engineering teammate Jordan King and local driver Marvin Kirchhofer.

UPDATE: Giovinazzi has been excluded from the results after the height of his car's undertray did not comply with the regulations.

Qualifying results

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap	Interval	Mph
1	2	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	12	1'22.193			200.338
2	21	Pierre Gasly	Prema Powerteam	12	1'22.209	0.016	0.016	200.299
3	9	Raffaele Marciello	RUSSIAN TIME	11	1'22.369	0.176	0.160	199.910
4	22	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	11	1'22.413	0.220	0.029	199.803
5	5	Alex Lynn	DAMS	12	1'22.422	0.229	0.009	199.781
6	3	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	12	1'22.489	0.296	0.067	199.619
7	6	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	12	1'22.524	0.331	0.035	199.534
8	4	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	12	1'22.548	0.355	0.024	199.476
9	19	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	11	1'22.796	0.603	0.248	198.879
10	10	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	11	1'22.805	0.612	0.009	198.857
11	1	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	11	1'22.812	0.619	0.007	198.840
12	11	Gustav Malja	Rapax	15	1'23.065	0.872	0.253	198.235
13	15	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	11	1'23.066	0.873	0.001	198.232
14	7	Mitch Evans	Campos Racing	12	1'23.398	1.205	0.332	197.443
15	23	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	12	1'23.400	1.207	0.002	197.438
16	18	Rene Binder	Carlin	13	1'23.465	1.272	0.065	197.285
17	12	Arthur Pic	Rapax	12	1'23.469	1.276	0.004	197.275
18	24	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	14	1'23.497	1.304	0.028	197.209
19	25	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden International	12	1'23.535	1.342	0.038	197.119
20	8	Sean Gelael	Campos Racing	13	1'23.784	1.591	0.249	196.533
21	14	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	12	1'24.399	2.206	0.615	195.101
EX	20	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Powerteam	14	1'22.384	0.191	0.015	199.873