Formula 2: Dennis Hauger wins pole in Melbourne

This year, Formula 2 races will be held in Australia for the second time and after two stages of the youth series, Zane Maloney, representing such an exotic country as Barbados, is in the lead in the individual competition.

The Rodin Motorsport driver took two victories in Bahrain at the beginning of this month, but in Saudi Arabia the weekend’s feature race was won by Enzo Fittipaldi, this year driving for Van Amersfoort Racing, and moved up to second place in the individual standings. . However, MP Motorsport’s Dennis Hauger was only one point behind him and he can of course also be considered one of the favorites of the season.

Maloney’s job this weekend is of course to strengthen his position and increase his lead, while his nearest rivals will naturally want to catch up and ideally get ahead, and Hauger immediately made his intentions known by setting the fastest time during the training.

Everyone’s attention was also focused on Oliver Berman, who made his unexpected debut in Formula 1 in Jeddah – he was then given a difficult task and earned points for the Ferrari team for 7th place. But now the 18-year-old Briton is back behind the wheel of a Prema Formula 2 car.

F2 qualifying was interrupted as soon as it started due to Victor Martin’s car stopping on the track. And she retired because at the very beginning of the session the French racer from the Alpine youth program made a mistake at approximately the same point on the circle as Alex Albon did in the first practice in Albert Park.

The difference is that Martin was luckier: he didn’t crash, but he stopped in a dangerous spot and red flags appeared on the track. All other drivers returned to the pit lane and the Australian marshals began evacuating equipment.

After some time the session continued and the first to show a more or less normal time was Kush Maini, the Indian driver of the Invicta Racing team, but he was immediately moved from the first line by Paul Aaron, who was the first to complete a lap faster than 1 minute and 30 seconds. But Hauger moved up to second position, losing only slightly to the Estonian.

It is clear that Aaron did not stay on the intermediate pole for long, and his time was in turn improved by Andrea Kimi Antonelli, Gabriel Bortoleto, Isaac Hajjar and Hauger. However, the Estonian Hitech rider improved noticeably and returned to the top of the protocol with a time of 1:29.385, which remained the best result of the first half of qualifying.

Everyone went to get new tires and only returned to the track ten minutes before the end of qualifying. Since the asphalt in Albert Park is not very abrasive, warming up the tires for a fast lap is not that easy, but on the other hand you can do more than one fast lap on one set without losing speed.

Maloney managed to set the best time of the session before yellow and red flags appeared on track – this time due to Jack Crawford, an American DAMS driver, crashing off the track and issuing a sincere apology to the team.

Once again qualifying was stopped with just over 4 minutes to go and the Barbados driver remained in first place with a lap of 1:29.374. In theory, the race management could decide not to continue the session in this situation, but in practice the races will still resume, as four minutes is enough to complete at least one fast lap.

Bortoleto overdid it on his only attempt, failed to keep the car on track and when he returned, almost prevented his partner, Maini, from setting a good time, but Kush was still able to improve on Maloney’s result. But that was not the end of the story about Formula 2 qualifying at Albert Park, as the Indian’s time was in turn blocked by Richard Ferschor, Andrea Kimi Antonelli and the aforementioned Dennis Hauger, who had the final say.

And this word of the Norwegian was very convincing, as he immediately surpassed Antonelli’s result by 0.3 seconds. No one was able to distinguish themselves on the city circuit in Melbourne, because at the end of the session the car was crashed by Enzo Fittipaldi, who flew off the track. That. It cannot be ruled out that someone else could have done a good lap, but we will never know because the session is over.

This is how Dennis Hauger won the pole, and next to him, from the first row of the starting field, the main race of the weekend starts Andrea Kimi Antonelli, who did not have much luck in the two previous stages of the season, but let’s hope that the driver of the Mercedes youth program will be able to improve his position this time. And pole in the sprint went to Roman Stanek, who showed the 10th result today.

Qualifying results