page_title: 2015 Bahrain GP2 Series round
section_title: Practice and qualifying
hierarchical_section_title: 2015 Bahrain GP2 Series round / Report / Practice and qualifying
caption_attribution_description: English: Stoffel Vandorne at Moscow Raceway in 2013
context_page_description: The 2015 Bahrain GP2 Series round was a pair of one-make single seater motor races held on 18 and 19 April 2015 at the Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir, Bahrain as part of the GP2 Series. It was the first round of the 2015 GP2 Series and was run in support of the 2015 Bahrain Grand Prix. The first race, a 32-lap feature event, was won by ART Grand Prix driver Stoffel Vandoorne from pole position. Rio Haryanto finished second for the Campos Racing team, and Racing Engineering driver Alexander Rossi took third. Haryanto won the second event, a 23-lap sprint race, ahead of Vandoorne in second, and Lazarus driver Nathanaël Berthon in third.
  Vandoorne retained his pole position advantage in the first race, which was disrupted on the fourth lap following a collision between Norman Nato, Arthur Pic, Pierre Gasly and Raffaele Marciello. Drivers on the soft-compound tyres made pit stops for medium-compound tyres, while Vandoorne remained the leader for the lap-nine restart. He held it until his pit stop at the end of lap 22, and Rossi took the lead on the following lap. He kept the position until Vandoorne overtook him to win the race.
context_section_description: One 45-minute practice session was held on Friday before the two races. King was fastest with a time of 1 minute, 42.441 seconds, ten-hundredths of a second faster than Racing Engineering teammate Alexander Rossi in second. Alex Lynn of DAMS was third-fastest, ahead of the top ART Grand Prix car of Stoffel Vandoorne. The Campos Racing pair of Arthur Pic and Rio Haryanto were fifth and sixth. Gasly was seventh-fastest, Evans eighth, Raffaele Marciello for Trident ninth, and Matsushita completed the top ten ahead of qualifying. Vandoorne's run ended prematurely with seven minutes of the session remaining when his car stopped due to an oil pressure failure.
  Friday afternoon's qualifying session ran for 30-minutes. The drivers' fastest lap times determined the starting order for the first race. The driver who won the pole position was awarded four points that went towards the Drivers' and Teams' Championship races. The session was held in cooler night-time weather conditions. Drivers used soft-compound tyres for their first timed laps before entering the pit lane for new tyres for the remainder of the session. Vandoorne set the pace in the early part of the session and improved to clinch his first pole position of the season, and his fifth consecutive in the series, with a time of 1 minute, 39.237 seconds. He was joined on the grid's front row by his teammate Matsushita who was three-tenths of a second slower than Vandoorne. Lynn was ninth after his first timed lap but recovered to qualify in third place. Pic, who was Vandoorne's closest contender in the session's opening segment, took fourth, ahead of Marciello who was stuck in second gear until his team corrected the issue. King was relegated to sixth by Marciello's fastest lap. Norman Nato (Arden International) and Rossi were seventh and eighth. Gasly in ninth made a mistake late in the session and Sirotkin was tenth. Russian Time's Artem Markelov was the fastest driver to not qualify in the top-ten starting positions. Haryanto ran strongly earl on but took 12th after he was unable to improve on his second set of soft-compound tyres. He was ahead of Evans, Robert Visoiu, and Richie Stanaway. The two Carlin drivers qualified in 16th and 18th with Julián Leal ahead of teammate Marco Sørensen. They were separated by Sergio Canamasas in the faster of the two MP Motorsport cars. André Negrão, Daniël de Jong, Nathanaël Berthon, René Binder, Marlon Stöckinger, and Zoël Amberg were the last of the qualifiers.
caption: Stoffel Vandoorne (pictured in 2013) had his fifth consecutive pole position in the GP2 Series.
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