Red Bull Ring GP2: Sirotkin beats Giovinazzi to pole by 0.006s

The pole was Renault F1 test driver Sirotkin's third in GP2 - and his second with his new team ART.

After Giovinazzi became the first-ever driver to take the GP2/11 below 1m14s at the circuit, teammate Gasly clocked in a 1m13.975s early on in the shootout - albeit coming up short of the Italian's practice benchmark.

However, nobody else came even close during the first run, Sirotkin lapping as next-best a tenth off, while Giovinazzi himself another was two tenths down.

With track conditions continuing to improve after Formula 1's FP2 session was affected by rain, the latter half of the shootout was expected to bring much faster laptimes - and the field all opted to run their second set of flying laps in the closing minutes.

First, it was Gasly taking his benchmark down to a 1m13.803s - but the Frenchman was quickly surpassed by Sirotkin and Giovinazzi, the Russian emerging 0.006s ahead with a 1m13.663s lap.

Gasly immediately looked to respond, going faster in sectors 1 and 2, only to be impeded by Nicholas Latifi through S3, his lap undone and the hold-up prompting an angry message on the radio.

With a minute to go, Giovinazzi lapped within half a tenth of his best effort - and the pole fight was done then and there as Jimmy Eriksson stopping in the final sector meant the session's end took place under yellow flags.

The Italian settled for a spot on the front row, ahead of teammate Gasly and compatriot Luca Ghiotto, the rookie taking his Trident car to fourth place,

Artem Markelov and Raffaele Marciello made it an all-Russian Time row three, ahead of Britons Oliver Rowland and Alex Lynn.

Norman Nato and Mitch Evans made up the top 10, while Rene Binder, replacing ART's suspended driver Nobuharu Matsushita, took 16th.

Qualifying results

Pos.	#	Driver	Team	Laps	Time	Gap	Kph
1	2	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	14	1'13.663		211.416
2	20	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Powerteam	15	1'13.669	0.006	211.399
3	21	Pierre Gasly	Prema Powerteam	14	1'13.803	0.140	211.015
4	15	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	15	1'14.091	0.428	210.195
5	10	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	14	1'14.099	0.436	210.172
6	9	Raffaele Marciello	RUSSIAN TIME	13	1'14.184	0.521	209.932
7	22	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	13	1'14.316	0.653	209.559
8	5	Alex Lynn	DAMS	13	1'14.387	0.724	209.359
9	3	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	15	1'14.456	0.793	209.165
10	7	Mitch Evans	Campos Racing	14	1'14.574	0.911	208.834
11	24	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	14	1'14.626	0.963	208.688
12	19	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	14	1'14.647	0.984	208.629
13	12	Arthur Pic	Rapax	15	1'14.688	1.025	208.515
14	4	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	15	1'14.815	1.152	208.161
15	18	Sergio Canamasas	Carlin	15	1'14.832	1.169	208.114
16	1	Rene Binder	ART Grand Prix	12	1'14.886	1.223	207.964
17	6	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	15	1'14.958	1.295	207.764
18	11	Gustav Malja	Rapax	15	1'15.020	1.357	207.592
19	8	Sean Gelael	Campos Racing	14	1'15.112	1.449	207.338
20	23	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	14	1'15.307	1.644	206.801
21	25	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden International	12	1'15.531	1.868	206.188
22	14	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	15	1'15.675	2.012	205.795