Prema’s Guanyu Zhou secured his first pole of the season for the opening European Formula 3 race at Zandvoort.
The Chinese racer was the only driver to set a time under 1m29s around the Dutch circuit, with his 1m28.861s lap 0.143s ahead of the next quickest driver.
Robert Shvartzman was top of the order halfway through the 20 minute session, but dropped backwards as Zhou and team-mate Mick Schumacher swapped positions at the top of the times.
With Marcus Armstrong, Ralf Aron, Dan Ticktum and Jonathan Aberdein also improving their lap times, Shwarzman dropped back to seventh, half a second off Zhou’s time.
Aron pipped Schumacher to second, his 1m29.004s time just 0.07s faster than Schumacher, while championship leader Armstrong finished fourth.
Ticktum and Aberdein took fifth and sixth.
Alex Palou finished seventh, ahead of Juri Vips and Ben Hingley.
Championship challenger Enaam Ahmed, who crashed heavily in the morning’s free practice session, suffered a difficult session and could only manage P22. He starts race one ahead of only Petru Florescu and series newcomer Sophia Florsch.
