Formula 2: Paul Aron wins pole position for the first time

The youth series will have three rounds in a row, just like Formula 1, which means that there will be six races over the next three weekends in which many points will be awarded. This will obviously have a big impact on the image of the season, and it all starts in Barcelona, ​​​​on a track that even young drivers have studied very well.

Overtaking is traditionally difficult at this circuit, so a lot depends on the starting position, and during Formula 2 qualifying the drivers had something to fight for.

It is symbolic that the first, more or less representative lap time – 1:25.385 – was shown by Paul Aron, the Estonian racer of the Hitech team, who was the leader in the individual competition after five stages.

But just seven minutes later the session was halted with red flags due to the departure of Briton Taylor Barnard, who only made his F2 debut this year. He lost control of his car in Turn 9, after which there was a very hard contact with the bump stops. The AIX Racing driver was not injured, but the car was totaled.

So far only ten drivers had made their first attempts, and so far in the qualifying protocol Aron follows Dennis Hauger, Franco Colapinto, Ritomo Miata and Kush Maini.

The evacuation of the damaged equipment and the repair of the rail fence took several minutes, after which the session resumed. Those who had not yet shown the time had to hurry in all respects, and Aron’s time was immediately improved by Isaac Hajjar, a racer in the Red Bull youth program. Kimi Antonelli moved up to second place, while Oliver Berman, his teammate at Prema Racing, for some reason did not shine with speed and remained in a distant 18th position.

With only ten minutes remaining before the end of the session, everyone returned to the pits for fresh soft tyres, and during this break the engineers explained to their drivers which parts of the track could be improved and at what cost.

It seems that Paul Aron listened to these recommendations more than others – it was he who returned to first place with a result of 1:24.766. Franco Colapinto tried to stay ahead of him and until the last moment it looked like he would succeed as he rode to the Estonian’s improving schedule, but he made a mistake on the last corner of the lap.

Despite this, he only lost to Aron by 0.006 seconds, but Jack Crawford, an American DAMS driver, managed to stay ahead of the Argentinian and fell even less short of pole position – literally a few thousandths. Paul Aron thus won his first qualifying of the season and in Formula 2 in general, since he made his debut in this series in the final stages of last year’s championship. This gave him two bonus points for pole position and on Sunday he will start the main race of the weekend from the most favorable position.

And in the short race on Saturday, Kush Maini will start from the first position and show the tenth result today, as F2 uses a partially reversed starting order.

Qualifying results