GP2: Sirotkin fastest in Monaco practice

Sergey Sirotkin was fastest in a Monaco GP2 practice in which championship leader Pierre Gasly was among a string of early crashers.

Red Bull Formula 1 protege Gasly had just gone fastest by eight tenths of a second with a 1m20.959s in the opening minutes when he slewed into the barriers at Ste Devote.

He had already brushed the wall through the final corner as he completed his pacesetting lap, and then did the job more comprehensively at the next turn, leaving Prema with substantial left-side damage to repair before Thursday afternoon's qualifying session.

The clear-up from Gasly's crash had only just been completed when ART driver Nobuharu Matsushita nosed into the wall at the same spot, an error that Daniel de Jong repeated soon afterward.

Matsushita's teammate Sirotkin was first to depose Gasly, and though he then lost the top spot to Jordan King for a spell, he reclaimed it with a later run on the super-soft tires.

It was an eventful few minutes for Sirotkin, as his first flying lap was stymied by traffic, his second counted as the session's 1m20.361s benchmark even though he skipped part of the chicane, and his third featured another visit to the chicane runoff.

Barcelona feature race winner Norman Nato ended the session second for Racing Engineering, with DAMS driver Alex Lynn completing the top three.

Gasly's time was still good enough for seventh, behind Arthur Pic, King and a resurgent Mitch Evans.

Russian Time duo Raffaele Marciello and Artem Markelov sandwiched Oliver Rowland in eighth and 10th.

Originally on Autosport.com