Azernews.Az

By Nigar Abbasova

The practice session of the GP2 series ended in Baku, with twenty two drivers competing in the race.

Championship leader Norman Nato was fastest in the GP2 series. Nato ultimately set the pace for Racing Engineering with a 1m55.394s.

Runner-up is a pilot from Italy representing Prema Racing Antonio Jiovinacci with the result of 1:55.719, the third is Sergei Sirotkin representing ART, Russia. His result is 1m56.093s. Pierre Gasly and Oliver Rowland completed the top five.

The 45-minute GP2 practice was the very first session on the new track.The session opened under sunny but windy conditions as the drivers fed onto the dirty Azerbaijani track on Medium Pirelli tyres. Nato set the early pace in a 1:58.148 as the drivers got to grips with the twisty and technical new track. The RUSSIAN TIME pair were the first drivers to challenge the Racing Engineering man: Artem Markelov went top first, but Raffaele Marciello bettered his teammate’s time in a 1:57.464 to sit pretty at the top of the standings. The session was interrupted by a first Virtual Safety Car as an ambulance was moved out of the run off area at Turn 15.

When the action picked up again, PREMA’s Giovinazzi found some extra pace to dip under 1m57s to claim the top spot – +0.5s ahead of Nato who had then moved up to P2. The Italian ace went even faster shortly after that and lapped the track in a 1:55.719 as Sirotkin and Pierre Gasly also improved to move to P2 and P3 respectively.

In the final stages, Nato went quickest and edged Giovinazzi out of P1. Sirotkin found a clear lap to improve and moved up to third. The run off area at Turn 15 proved to be useful as Marciello, Philo Paz Armand, Gustav Malja and Nobuharu Matsushita all tested it out with the latter stopping and retiring with five minutes left on the clock. The VSC was redeployed until the chequered flag as the marshals retrieved the ART car.

At the end of the session, Nato remained top ahead of Giovinazzi, Sirotkin, Gasly, Rowland, Luca Ghiotto, Jordan King, Arthur Pic, Marciello and Sergio Canamasas

The eighth round of the 2016 session of the F1 European Grand Prix will start on June 17, 2016.

As much as 11 teams comprised of 2 pilots will participate in the race. The length of the circuit is 6 km. The width of the widest section of the track is 13 meters while the narrowest part is 7.6 meters.

Baku City Circuit is the second longest F1 track on the calendar, with a length slightly over six kilometers as an anti-clockwise layout. Many describe this track as the most complex, entertaining and very curious, for both racers and spectators.

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