Formula 2: Second pole position of the season won by Victor Martin

The weather forecast, which promised rain on Friday afternoon, did not come true, so qualifying in Formula 2 at the circuit in Spielberg went without surprises. As expected, the drivers hindered each other on the track and it was not easy to do a normal lap due to the heavy traffic; again, as is often the case on the Red Bull Ring, times have been canceled more than once due to track limit violations.

At the same time, the favorites remained the same – at the beginning of the session Victor Marten announced their claims to pole position – he was the first to lead the protocol of the session with a more or less representative result – Frederic Vesti, Theo Purscher and Jack Duane . Admittedly, the Australian’s best lap was canceled and he rolled back to fifth.

After the break, all the riders, having been fitted with new tyres, returned to the track to make a decisive attack on pole. Marten immediately improved his own time – immediately by almost three tenths (1:14.643), but Vesti, Pursher, Kush Maini and Duane didn’t lose much from him and were able to improve their results.

But this is in theory, but in practice the clock was ticking inexorably, the session came to an end and the French rider of the ART team, who occupied the 10th line of the individual classification, remained in the front line.

Shortly before the end of qualifying, Jehan Daruvala, struggling to complete the lap as fast as possible, flew off the track around the 6th corner and everything could have ended in an accident, but the Indian rider managed to avoid major problems . however, he naturally remained on the 10th line. However, he will not be able to start from pole position in Saturday’s sprint, as one of his predecessors had to miss a lap and Jehan finished ninth.

True, in the course of his failed attempt, Daruvala prevented Enzo Fittipaldi, and the Brazilian could not improve on his 6th result. But this episode was the only interesting event of the session, which ended with Victor Marten winning. For the second time in his debut season in Formula 2, the Frenchman, who celebrated his 22nd birthday a few weeks ago, will start from pole position on Sunday.

Next to him on the front row of the grid is the car of Frederic Vesti, the leader of the individual classification. And on the third attempt, Theo Purscher will start the weekend’s feature race not so much behind the Dane in the championship – 11 points.

At the same time, Jack Crawford, the American Hitech racer, who has moved up to the 10th line of the protocol, will start from pole position in the sprint. However, this will only happen if none of the top ten drivers are penalized afterwards, which cannot be ruled out either.

Qualifying results