By alley - Jul 29, 2016, 4:31 AM ET

GP2: Gasly fastest in Hockenheim practice

GP2 championship leader and Red Bull Formula 1 protege Pierre Gasly was fastest in practice at the series' German Grand Prix supporting Hockenheim round.

Continuing the run of form that has produced feature race wins at the last two events, Gasly put his Prema car in front with a 1m23.269s early on and was never headed. But the pack was extremely tight, with the top 15 cars all within 0.819 seconds of Gasly's mark.

Monaco feature race winner Artem Markelov went second for Russian Time, 0.092s off the pace. That put him fractionally ahead of Williams F1 junior Alex Lynn and top rookie Luca Ghiotto.

The men who occupy third to sixth in the standings, Norman Nato, Raffaele Marciello, Jordan King and Oliver Rowland, filled fifth to eighth places.

Gasly's team-mate and nearest championship rival Antonio Giovinazzi was ninth, followed by Hungary sprint race winner Sergey Sirotkin.

FREE PRACTICE RESULTS:

Pos	Driver	Team	Time	Gap	Laps
1	Pierre Gasly	Prema Racing	1m23.269ss	1m23.269s	19
2	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	1m23.361ss	0.092s	21
3	Alex Lynn	DAMS	1m23.370ss	0.101s	21
4	Luca Ghiotto	Trident	1m23.379ss	0.110s	21
5	Norman Nato	Racing Engineering	1m23.470ss	0.201s	16
6	Raffaele Marciello	RUSSIAN TIME	1m23.668ss	0.399s	20
7	Jordan King	Racing Engineering	1m23.670ss	0.401s	15
8	Oliver Rowland	MP Motorsport	1m23.675ss	0.406s	17
9	Antonio Giovinazzi	Prema Racing	1m23.681ss	0.412s	21
10	Sergey Sirotkin	ART Grand Prix	1m23.796ss	0.527s	20
11	Marvin Kirchhofer	Carlin	1m23.931ss	0.662s	16
12	Nobuharu Matsushita	ART Grand Prix	1m24.023ss	0.754s	22
13	Mitch Evans	Pertamina Campos Racing	1m24.025ss	0.756s	20
14	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1m24.067ss	0.798s	21
15	Arthur Pic	Rapax	1m24.098ss	0.829s	22
16	Gustav Malja	Rapax	1m24.282ss	1.013s	23
17	Rene Binder	Carlin	1m24.425ss	1.156s	18
18	Nabil Jeffri	Arden International	1m24.653ss	1.384s	19
19	Daniel de Jong	MP Motorsport	1m24.863ss	1.594s	21
20	Sean Gelael	Pertamina Campos Racing	1m24.920ss	1.651s	20
21	Jimmy Eriksson	Arden International	1m24.938ss	1.669s	20
22	Philo Paz Armand	Trident	1m25.730ss	2.461s	22