ART Grand Prix’s Sergey Sirotkin narrowly defeated the Prema Racing squad to take pole position for this weekend’s GP2 round at the Red Bull Ring by six thousandths of a second.

After the F1 practice-interrupting storm, the GP2 cars took to the circuit on a relatively green track, and Sirotkin’s pole time on the super-soft rubber was only three tenths faster than the free practice pace on the harder Pirellis.

The Russian positioned himself nicely on track behind Prema’s Pierre Gasly – who was quickest during the opening runs – to lap a tenth and a half faster than the Frenchman.

Just a few seconds behind on the track, Gasly’s team-mate Antonio Giovinazzi also improved, but fell narrowly short of toppling Sirotkin’s polewinning performance.

Gasly was on another big effort the following time around, setting a personal best first sector and going fastest overall in the middle section of the lap, only to catch a slowing Nicholas Latifi after Turn 6.

“I was faster [than Sirotkin’s pole] until I caught Latifi,” said the Red Bull junior, “and I lost everything behind him – I was, ‘Come on, please let me pass’.

“I talked to him and apparently he didn’t see me; it was a bit frustrating because I knew the second lap was the one to get the best out of the tyres.”

Giovinazzi, meanwhile, was on a similar lap only to run wide at the final corner.

While the leading trio look set to battle out victory in Saturday’s race, there was a gap of three tenths to the fourth-fastest Luca Ghiotto, who was a late improver in his Trident machine.

As they were in free practice, the Russian Time duo were very evenly matched, but this time it was series leader Artem Markelov who emerged ahead to grab fifth from team-mate Raffaele Marciello.

Oliver Rowland finished up seventh in his MP Motorsport car ahead of Alex Lynn, the DAMS driver getting himself out on track first for the second runs but appearing to lose time behind Jimmy Eriksson, the Arden team having sent its cars out relatively late.

Norman Nato’s last lap gave him ninth for Racing Engineering, with Campos Racing’s Mitch Evans completing the top 10.

It was a relatively incident-free session, although Eriksson parked his car off the track at Turn 7 with a couple of minutes to go.

QUALIFYING TIMES

Sirotkin soars to Austria GP2 pole, Evans 10th for Campos