On the new circuit of Baku, rookie Antonio Giovinazzi claims his first GP2 Series pole position ahead of ART Grand Prix drivers, Nobuharu Matsushita and Sergey Sirotkin.
The first driver to head out in Gustav Malja before the whole field went out. As in practice, the drivers seemed to struggle warming up the tyres and needed a certain amount of time before doing significant times. Oliver Rowland was the first making a significant laptime before being beaten by Nobuharu Matsushita and Antonio Giovinazzi and Sergio Canamasas.
The times were tighter than they were in free-practice although Pierre Gasly set the fastest time claimed fastest lap with 20 minutes to go with a 0.5s margin. Just afterwards, Daniël De Jong and Philo Paz Armand were stuck in the run-off area of T3 while Antonio Giovinazzi stole the fastest lap from him teammate. If the Dutchman could get out on track, the Indonesian driver did not manage to and the red flag was deployed to retrieve the car with 18 minutes to go.
When the session went green again, Nabil Jeffri was the first to head out of track. Most drivers were able to improve their previous times, like Oliver Rowland who moved himself off to P2 before Sergey Sirotkin kicked Giovinazzi off provisional pole before the Italian took back his place with a 0.6s margin. Matsushita eventually went faster than the Prema driver for 0.053s. With three minutes to go, Giovinazzi benefits from the slipstream of his teammate to take back provisional pole position. Most drivers rejoined the pits leaving clear track for other drivers to improve their time.
Antonio Giovinazzi took his first pole position in GP2 Series in his third qualifying session in the series with a 1:51.752. Nobuharu Matsushita was second ahead of his teammate Sergey Sirotkin. Marciello, Ghiotto, Rowland, Kirchhofer, Gasly, Nato (under investigation) and Canamasas complete top 10.