Spaniard Carlos Sainz continued his dominance at Monza by claiming the first pole position of the 2014 Formula Renault 3.5 series season. The DAMS driver put in a good first lap and then got faster and faster, and his lap of 1:33.235s towards the end of the session sealed the pole spot for the first race that begins later.
Second on the grid went to Arden Motorsport’s Will Buller, who finshed 0.124s off top spot. Third went to the series’ highest placed rookie Luca Ghiotto for International Draco Racing, just ahead of Strakka Racing’s Will Stevens. The Zeta Corse of series debutant Roberto Merhi, who was only confirmed to that drive a few days prior to the event, rounded out the top five.
Marlon Stockinger put his Lotus machine into sixth place in a session that saw fourteen cars within a second of Sainz’ pole time. Seventh went to Comtec Racing’s sole representative in Monza Nikolay Martsenko, just ahead of the third quickest rookie Pierre Gasly in the second Arden Motorsport car. Jazeman Jaafar of ISR and Matthieu Vaxiviere in the second Lotus rounded out the top ten.
The two Fortec Motorsport entries of Oliver Rowland and Sergey Sirotkin seemed to struggle for pace, and ended up qualifying sixteenth and eighteenth on the grid, not where either was expected to be.
AVF driver Zoel Amberg caused a red flag with 43 seconds of the session remaining, meaning an early end to qualifying. As a result of causing the stoppage, the Swiss driver had his best lap time deleted, and he will start fourteenth out of the twenty-one drivers.
Monza Saturday Qualifying Session Result
POS | DRIVER | NAT | TEAM | TIME |
1 | Carlos Sainz | ESP | DAMS | 1:33.235 |
2 | Will Buller | GBR | Arden Motorsport | 1:33.359 |
3 | Luca Ghiotto | ITA | International Draco Racing | 1:33.451 |
4 | Will Stevens | GBR | Strakka Racing | 1:33.549 |
5 | Roberto Merhi | ESP | Zeta Corse | 1:33.653 |
6 | Marlon Stockinger | PHI | Lotus | 1:33.692 |
7 | Nikolay Martsenko | RUS | Comtec Racing | 1:33.708 |
8 | Pierre Gasly | FRA | Arden Motorsport | 1:33.857 |
9 | Jazeman Jaafar | MAY | ISR | 1:33.863 |
10 | Matthieu Vaxiviere | FRA | Lotus | 1:33.920 |
11 | Roman Mavlanov | RUS | Zeta Corse | 1:33.935 |
12 | Marco Sorensen | DEN | Tech 1 Racing | 1:34.110 |
13 | Matias Laine | FIN | Strakka Racing | 1:34.132 |
14 | Zoel Amberg | SWI | AVF | 1:34.178 |
15 | Pietro Fantin | BRZ | International Draco Racing | 1:34.252 |
16 | Oliver Rowland | GBR | Fortec Motorsport | 1:34.274 |
17 | Norman Nato | FRA | DAMS | 1:34.354 |
18 | Sergey Sirotkin | RUS | Fortec Motorsport | 1:34.414 |
19 | Oliver Webb | GBR | Pons Racing | 1:34.460 |
20 | Meindert van Buuren | NED | Pons Racing | 1:34.650 |
21 | Beitske Visser | NED | AVF | 1:35.383 |