Luiz Razia And AirAsia Claim First GP2 Pole At Hungaroring

Luiz Razia has scored the first pole position of his GP2 career after coming out on top in a closely fought qualifying session at the Hungaroring.

The Caterham Team AirAsia driver set the pace initially in the 30 minute session, before Fabio Leimer moved into P1 for Rapax. Championship leader and practice pacesetter Romain Grosjean then went fastest for DAMS, but was immediately knocked off by Razia just behind him, the Brazilian returning to top spot by two hundredths of a second.

Grosjean's chief title rival Giedo van der Garde then moved ahead of Razia for Addax, with Grosjean improving to second and missing out on the Dutchman's time by just 0.006.

As the field returned to the pits midway through the session Luca Filippi moved two tenths clear at the head of the timesheets.

Once the field returned to the track few drivers made improvements to their times. One man who did was Marcus Ericsson. With five minutes remaining in the session the Swede jumped up into second, falling just 0.006s shy of Filippi's benchmark.

Then with three minutes left to run Razia returned to provisional pole, going 0.14s quicker than Filippi. Filippi looked set to improve his time but was hampered when Adam Carroll spun at Turn 6, bringing out the yellow flags.

This allowed Razia to hold on up front and secure pole. Filippi remained in second with Ericsson third. Charles Pic moved up onto the outside of the second row at the checkered flag. His compatriots Grosjean and Jules Bianchi will share the third row of the grid.

Van der Garde slipped back to seventh, with Leimer, Esteban Gutierrez and Sam Bird completing the top ten.

Qualifying results: