GP2 Silverstone: Red Bull's Gasly fastest in tight practice session

The Frenchman had the best of the first runs, before there were hardly any improvements in the second half of the session as tyres faded, even with everyone using the hard-compound Pirelli rubber and with relatively cool temperatures.

Gasly was 0.155 seconds ahead of Sergey Sirotkin on the opening runs, and that's how it stayed for the rest of the session.

"The session has been good," said Gasly.

"Now we need to concentrate on qually because the gaps are small, but it's a good beginning.

"The front tyres were a little bit difficult to get up to temperature, and then after there was quite a lot of degradation, but already the pace is good."

Gasly's point about the times being close came after Sirotkin's ART Grand Prix car finished the session as the fastest of 12 rivals who were all within a second of the pace.

Third was Rapax driver Arthur Pic, while the second Prema entry of Antonio Giovinazzi was fourth on the Italian's first trip to Silverstone in anything more potent than a Formula 3 or LMP2 car.

Williams development driver Alex Lynn led the British trio, fifth for DAMS, with his fellow Barcelona winner Norman Nato leading the Racing Engineering charge in sixth.

Oliver Rowland, back at the scene of his eye-opening GP2 debut last year, finished up seventh with MP Motorsport, with Red Bull Ring sprint-race victor Jordan King (Racing Engineering) in eighth.

Back after missing the last round due to being banned for his safety-car fails in Baku, Nobuharu Matsushita put his ART car ninth, with Artem Markelov completing the top 10 in his Russian Time machine.

Markelov's team-mate Raffaele Marciello, who leads the standings, was down in 13^th and was the last man within a second of Gasly.

He trailed Red Bull Ring feature-race winner Mitch Evans and Luca Ghiotto - the Italian's car triggered a virtual safety car half an hour into the session when it was parked just off the track at Village.

PRACTICE RESULTS:

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Pierre Gasly	Prema Racing	1m39.890s	-	18
2	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	1m40.045s	0.155s	17
3	Arthur Pic	Rapax	1m40.154s	0.264s	20
4	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Racing	1m40.217s	0.327s	19
5	Alex Lynn	DAMS	1m40.227s	0.337s	20
6	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	1m40.249s	0.359s	17
7	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	1m40.365s	0.475s	16
8	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	1m40.507s	0.617s	19
9	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	1m40.647s	0.757s	19
10	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	1m40.671s	0.781s	19
11	Mitch Evans	Pertamina Campos Racing	1m40.704s	0.814s	18
12	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	1m40.760s	0.870s	10
13	Raffaele Marciello	RUSSIAN TIME	1m40.888s	0.998s	17
14	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	1m40.959s	1.069s	17
15	Sergio Canamasas	Carlin	1m41.111s	1.221s	18
16	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1m41.215s	1.325s	19
17	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	1m41.696s	1.806s	18
18	Gustav Malja	Rapax	1m41.705s	1.815s	21
19	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	1m42.426s	2.536s	18
20	Sean Gelael	Pertamina Campos Racing	1m42.594s	2.704s	21
21	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	1m42.685s	2.795s	20
22	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden International	1m43.034s	3.144s	18