Johnny Cecotto Jr took his second career GP2 Series pole position in a close and exciting qualifying session around the Red Bull Ring in Austria. The Venezuelan driver beat current championship leader Jolyon Palmer to take top spot. It was also Trident Racing’s first pole position since another Venezuelan Pastor Maldonado at Monaco back in 2007.
It was also the first time in 2014 that the DAMS team did not take pole position, as Palmer came up 0.040s short. He will still start on the front row, as his lap time was 0.006s faster than Felipe Nasr in the leading Carlin entry.
The two Racing Engineering drivers of Stefano Coletti and Raffaele Marciello will line up fourth and fifth for tomorrow’s Feature race, but the Italian will be rueing a slow moving Caterham at turn eight while on a lap that could have challenge for pole position.
Stoffel Vandoorne will want to score his first points since winning the Bahrain Feature race at the beginning of the season, and will start tomorrows race from the third row of the grid in his ART Grand Prix machine, setting the sixth best time of the session. He will start just in front of Arthur Pic who had his best qualifying session of the season for Campos Racing in seventh.
Russian Time’s Mitch Evans will start from eighth, just ahead of EQ8 Caterham Racing’s Alexander Rossi and DAMS’ Stephane Richelmi who complete the top ten.
The pace setter from the practice session Julian Leal could only qualify twelfth in an incredibly tight session, twenty drivers were covered by less than a second, while just 1.342s covered all twenty-six participants.
Red Bull Ring Qualifying Result
POS | DRIVER | NAT | TEAM | TIME |
1 | Johnny Cecotto Jr | VEN | Trident Racing | 1:15.312 |
2 | Jolyon Palmer | GBR | DAMS | 1:15.352 |
3 | Felipe Nasr | BRZ | Carlin | 1:15.358 |
4 | Stefano Coletti | MON | Racing Engineering | 1:15.443 |
5 | Raffaele Marciello | ITA | Racing Engineering | 1:15.449 |
6 | Stoffel Vandoorne | BEL | ART Grand Prix | 1:15.481 |
7 | Arthur Pic | FRA | Campos Racing | 1:15.608 |
8 | Mitch Evans | NZL | RT Russian Time | 1:15.614 |
9 | Alexander Rossi | USA | EQ8 Caterham Racing | 1:15.644 |
10 | Stephane Richelmi | MON | DAMS | 1:15.664 |
11 | Andre Negrao | BRZ | Arden International | 1:15.773 |
12 | Julian Leal | COL | Carlin | 1:15.784 |
13 | Rio Haryanto | INO | EQ8 Caterham Racing | 1:15.811 |
14 | Adrian Quaife-Hobbs | GBR | Rapax | 1:15.927 |
15 | Tio Ellinas | CYP | MP Motorsport | 1:15.964 |
16 | Sergio Canamasas | ESP | Trident Racing | 1:16.034 |
17 | Takuya Izawa | JAP | ART Grand Prix | 1:16.092 |
18 | Artem Markelov | RUS | RT Russian Time | 1:16.136 |
19 | Daniel Abt | GER | Hilmer Motorsport | 1:16.246 |
20 | Kimiya Sato | JAP | Campos Racing | 1:16.274 |
21 | Rene Binder | AUT | Arden International | 1:16.331 |
22 | Daniel de Jong | NED | MP Motorsport | 1:16.334 |
23 | Facu Regalia | ARG | Hilmer Motorsport | 1:16.497 |
24 | Simon Trummer | SWI | Rapax | 1:16.531 |
25 | Conor Daly | USA | Venezuela GP Lazarus | 1:16.539 |
26 | Nathanael Berthon | FRA | Venezuela GP Lazarus | 1:16.654 |