08/07/2016
NEWS STORY
Pierre Gasly has started his Silverstone weekend in fine form after topping the timesheets in this morning's Free Practice session at the fabled British circuit, leading the way from Sergey Sirotkin and Arthur Pic.
The Red Bull tester stopped the clocks at 1:39.890 a third of the way through the competitive session, taking advantage of the warmer conditions after practice commenced under ominously overcast conditions.
Pic was the first man to set a competitive time just five minutes into the session, and the floodgates were opened: Gasly, Jordan King, Alex Lynn, Pic and Sirotkin all claimed the top spot briefly, but at the fifteen minute mark Gasly set the time that would not be beaten before the majority of the field returned to the pits for their second set of tyres.
With the second half of the session used to work on race pace there was little chance of an improvement in times, and so it proved. A brief virtual safety car period broken up the session as the marshals moved quickly to remove Luca Ghiotto's halted Trident from Turn 3 at the thirty minute mark, but there was little else to concern the teams as the rest of the grid kept their powder dry ahead of this afternoon's Qualifying session.
Behind the top three Antonio Giovinazzi, Lynn, Norman Nato, Oliver Rowland, King, Nobuharu Matsushita and Artem Markelov were all within a second of the top time and will be looking to push forward in just a few hours time.
1. Pierre Gasly PREMA Racing 1:39.890
2. Sergey Sirotkin ART Grand Prix 1:40.045
3. Arthur Pic Rapax 1:40.154
4. Antonio Giovinazzi PREMA Racing 1:40.217
5. Alex Lynn DAMS 1:40.227
6. Norman Nato Racing Engineering 1:40.249
7. Oliver Rowland MP Motorsport 1:40.365
8. Jordan King Racing Engineering 1:40.507
9. Nobuharu Matsushita ART Grand Prix 1:40.647
10. Artem Markelov RUSSIAN TIME 1:40.671
11. Mitch Evans Pertamina Campos Racing 1:40.704
12. Luca Ghiotto Trident 1:40.760
13. Raffaele Marciello RUSSIAN TIME 1:40.888
14. Marvin Kirchhöfer Carlin 1:40.959
15. Sergio Canamasas Carlin 1:41.111
16. Nicholas Latifi DAMS 1:41.215
17. Nabil Jeffri Arden International 1:41.696
18. Gustav Malja Rapax 1:41.705
19 Daniel de Jong MP Motorsport 1:42.426
20. Sean Gelael Pertamina Campos Racing 1:42.594
21. Philo Paz Armand Trident 1:42.685
22. Jimmy Eriksson Arden International 1:43.034