Charles Leclerc appeared to have continued his domination of qualifying this season with a seventh consecutive pole position, but the Monegasque driver was disqualified post-session for a technical issue.
The Prema Racing driver had set the pace again at the Hungaroring and had appeared to have broken the record for consecutive pole positions in the championship, but he will be forced to settle for a joint record with Stoffel Vandoorne after his car failed post-qualifying checks.
Scrutineers found his car’s differential had been fitted with incorrect shims, which ‘did not comply with the material requirements laid out in the Dallara user manual’, and as a result he will start at the back of the field on Saturday afternoon.
Inheriting the pole position will be DAMS driver Oliver Rowland, despite the Briton ending 0.463 seconds off Leclerc’s best, while Artem Markelov will join him on the front row for Russian Time.
Jordan King will line-up third on the grid for MP Motorsport ahead of Antonio Fuoco, who now becomes the leading Prema Racing driver in fourth, while Norman Nato of Pertamina Arden and Nicholas Latifi of DAMS will share row three.
Despite crashing in practice earlier in the day, Nyck de Vries recovered to qualify seventh for Rapax ahead of Nobuharu Matsushita of ART Grand Prix, while Sergio Canamasas of Rapax and series debutant Santino Ferrucci of Trident complete the top ten.
The session was interrupted by a red flag when Sean Gelael spun at turn one, which compromised a number of drivers’ runs, including Leclerc and Alexander Albon, who will start eleventh ahead of Russian Time’s Luca Ghiotto.
Sergio Sette Câmara was also handed a penalty post-session when he was found guilty of impeding Latifi, with the Brazilian dropping from fifteenth to eighteenth as a result, ahead only of Gelael and Leclerc.
Hungaroring Qualifying Result
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