Victor Martins stormed to pole position for the second round of the Formula 2 season, with the reigning Formula 3 champion dominating the field in a session that was shortened by a red flag.
Martins found himself in the mix straight away, fighting for the top of the time sheets with Ferrari juniors and fellow rookies Arthur Leclerc and Oliver Bearman.
In the end, it was the ART driver who set the fastest time, with a commanding margin of 0.744s over Bearman, who in turn managed to stay ahead of Martin’s teammate and championship leader Theo Pourchaire by only a thousandth of a second.
All 22 drivers were out on track early in the session, taking two warmup laps to get enough heat into the supersoft tyres as well as the brakes.
Roman Stanek was the first to set a competitive lap time, with times quickly coming in after and Leclerc eventually taking the lead with a lap time of 1.42.629 before the first red flag came out.
It was Richard Verschoor who, with 18 minutes left on the clock, caused the interruption, the dutchman spun into turn 22, causing his Van Amersfoort to stall and losing the engine, meaning he could no longer take part in the session.
After a brief red flag period to clear the stricken car, both ARTs and Carlins came out of the box on a used set of softs, before aborting the lap and returning to the pits.
After a quiet few minutes, which saw only Juan Manuel Correa and Jak Crawford on the track, the remaining cars came spilling out of the pitlane.
With 10 minutes left on the clock, drivers followed the same warm up procedure as during the early stages of the session.
With the high track evolution coming into play, it was Bearman who managed to find himself at the top of the timing sheets before Martins set a dominating lap, pushing the Ferrari junior down to second, before a second red flag came out.
Leclerc pulled over in turn 22, after seemingly having made contact with the wall on his flying lap. With only two minutes left on the board, the session would not be restarted, causing Dennis Hauger to miss out on completing his flying lap, which left the MP driver down in 15th.
Pourchaire, who was on pole last time out in Bahrain by a similar margin, slotted into third behind Bearman, while Jack Doohan will join him on the second row on Sunday.
Meanwhile, Jehan Daruvala found himself in fifth, ahead of the highest-ranked Red Bull junior Ayumu Iwasa in sixth. Mercedes junior Frederik Vesti will slot into seventh, ahead of Kush Maini.
Last round’s Sprint Race winner Ralph Boschung and Hitech’s Jak Crawford round out the top ten, with Crawford set to start from pole for tomorrow’s Sprint race.
The 20-lap Sprint Race will take place tomorrow, at 18:10 local time, with the Feature Race set for Sunday, at 16:15 local time.
