Formula 2: Jack Doohan wins qualifying for Barcelona

The Formula 2 qualifying session in Barcelona went off without surprises, although events unfolded according to a rather curious scenario.

The first to show a more or less representative time was the experienced Jehan Daruvala, a Prema rider, who takes third place in the individual classification after three stages of the season.

But the youth championship leader, Theo Purscher, kept inconspicuous at the start of the session, maybe he couldn’t find an approach to rubber – he didn’t get above the 7th line in the first ten minutes of the session.

His main rival, Brazilian Felipe Drugovic, who is only two points behind him, was in no rush to leave the pits and started work on the track after 12 minutes had passed since the start of the session. When he started his first fast lap it became clear why he chose this tactic: most of the cars were already back in the pit lane and no one was interfering with the MP Motorsport driver.

Drugovic could really show the best time of this part of the session, but his plans were shattered by Jack Duane, who was almost immediately a few tenths ahead of the Brazilian. But then Daruvala set his second fastest lap, blocking Australian driver Virtuosi Racing’s result by 0.263 seconds.

Overall the results were pretty tight, the top ten fit in with a bit of a second and Purscher fell back to tenth position ten minutes before the end of qualifying.

Interestingly enough, after completing a lap of 1’28,884, Daruvala even left the cockpit of his Dallara, took off his helmet and didn’t look like he would return to the track.

With 7 minutes remaining before the end of the session, Purscher made another attempt to improve his position, which clearly did not match the championship leader’s status. For him, however, Duane made serious claims for pole position, having completed a circle nearly three tenths faster than Daruwala. But while Theo managed to show a higher result, it was only enough to climb to the seventh line of the protocol.

On the radio, however, he complained to the team that Drugovich was interfering with him, and on the video replay of this episode, it was really clear that Felipe was not acting quite correctly in one of the turns. The stewards had reason to suspect the Brazilian would cause disruption on the track, but promised to announce their decision after the session. By the way, at the same time Drugovich was only in 8th place.

The closer the session ended, the clearer it became that Daruvala had made a tactical miscalculation by giving up the fight for pole early – if only because of some problems.

Jack Duane will not only start from the most favorable position in Sunday’s race for the second time in his first full season in Formula 2 and receive two extra points for winning qualifying, but two more for Indian driver Prema – Youri Wips and Frederic Vesti.

For example, Duane and Vips start from the first row on Sunday, Vesti and Daruwala from the second row. But tomorrow’s sprint will start from pole position Drugovic. He showed the 10th result today and in Formula 2 a partially reversed starting order will be used in Saturday’s race.

Qualification Results