Monza, Qual.: Gasly soars to Monza pole

Pierre Gasly broke his rivals’ hearts with a stunning lap late in qualifying to claim his first GP2 pole this afternoon in Monza, repeating his efforts from this morning’s free practice to steal the top spot from Mitch Evans and Series leader Stoffel Vandoorne.

The Red Bull test driver stopped the clocks at 1:31.272, two tenths to the good over his rivals in a dramatically close session at the Autodromo, which opened to the usual hot and sunny conditions known well to the teams, with all drivers on track immediately to take advantage of the rubber laid down by the F1 teams just moments before.

Sergey Sirotkin was the first man on track, and the Russian set the early running: five minutes in and Sirotkin led McLaren tester Vandoorne, Gasly and Evans around the circuit, with each driver going successively quicker to claim the top of the timesheets. By the time most of the field returned to the pits it looked as though the New Zealander had done enough to annex pole, with the Belgian finding a little more time next time round to slot in behind him.

With Alexander Rossi running almost alone on circuit on a different schedule to most of his rivals, eyes up and down the pitlane were watching the American’s times to see if there could be any improvement. By the time they all re-emerged the drivers largely spent their time dealing with the traffic caused by that many cars on track at the same time, but Gasly threaded the needle to find enough space to steal the top spot with six minutes remaining.

His rivals eased off in the hope of saving enough tyres for a last ditch run, but it was not to be as the clock wound down to zero, handing Gasly the honours in an incredibly close session which saw 16 drivers within a second of pole, and everyone within two. Alex Lynn, Sirotkin, Rio Haryanto, Arthur Pic and Richie Stanaway will all be burning the midnight oil with their teams tonight, looking to find a way to jump the top three in tomorrow’s feature race.