Carlin’s Sergio Sette Camara grabbed a maiden Formula 2 pole position, snatching top spot from Renault Formula 1 reserve driver Jack Aitken on his final lap of the session.
Sette Camara was fifth after the opening runs, while Aitken was second. The ART Grand Prix driver had been demoted by McLaren F1 junior Nyck de Vries, who was one of five drivers to complete their first runs during the mid-session gap while most of the field sat in the garage between attempts.
Aitken was one of the earliest drivers to complete his second attempt, posting a 1m27.430s and returning to provisional pole.
Having completed his last run early, he watched the final minutes of the session on the pitwall. While the majority of drivers failed to improve on their second runs, Sette Camara vaulted from fifth to first, improving by over 0.2s to snatch pole from Aitken, who ended up second.
De Vries qualified in third ahead of championship leader and Mercedes F1 junior George Russell.
Despite setting a session-best time in the middle sector, Russell failed to improve overall on his final lap of the session, losing 0.3s in the first sector alone. He apologised to the team on the radio, citing a “poor” preparation lap as the reason behind his slow second attempt.
Campos Racing’s Luca Ghiotto was 11th after his first lap, but climbed to fifth in the closing stages, edging Lando Norris by 0.036s.
Artem Markelov ended the session in seventh place and will start alongside Trident’s Arjun Maini. Both set a personal best sector time on their second attempts but were unable to improve overall.
On the contrary, Ralph Boschung and Louis Deletraz made significant gains in the session’s closing stages. They finished ninth and 10th respectively.
Despite having taken three pole positions in 2018, DAMS’s Alexander Albon ended up 13th and did not figure higher than ninth after either of his two runs, finishing less than 0.02s ahead of his team-mate Nicholas Latifi.
Newcomer Alessio Lorandi, who has been promoted from Trident’s GP3 programme in place of Santino Ferrucci, ended his first F2 qualifying session in 17th.
He beat series veteran Sean Gelael, ex-F1 driver Roberto Merhi as well as Tadaske Makino, who suffered a crash during practice before ending qualifying as the slowest of the 20 drivers.
