Mick Schumacher’s momentum in the FIA European Formula 3 Championship continued on Friday when he took pole position for the opening race of the weekend at the Red Bull Ring.
The German, who took all three victories on offer last time out at the Nurburgring, set a time of 1:23.640 to put his Prema Theodore Racing machine on top, with Schumacher ending the day 0.247 seconds clear of the chasing pack, led by team-mate Robert Shwartzman.
Marcus Armstrong made it a trio of Prema drivers at the front of the field in third, while Jehan Daruvala was the best of the rest for Carlin in fourth, with the Indian the only other driver to dip beneath 1:24s during the session.
Jüri Vips and Daniel Ticktum will form an all-Motopark third row, with the latter going into the weekend as the championship leader, albeit by only three points from Schumacher, while Jonathan Aberdein is the highest qualifier in the field not to have taken a victory in 2018, the South African putting his Motopark machine into seventh.
Enaam Ahmed was the best placed of the Hitech Bullfrog GP trio in eighth, with Fabio Scherer ending ninth for Motopark ahead of Prema’s Ralf Aron, who finished just ahead of team-mate Guanyu Zhou and Carlin duo Ferdinand Habsburg and Sacha Fenestraz.
Once more in the series, the times were close between the field, with less than one second separating the top twenty drivers.
Series returnee Julian Hanses, who started the season racing with ma-con but is now racing with Carlin, ended twenty-second fastest, 1.230 seconds off the pace but more than seven-tenths of a second clear of team-mate Ameya Vaidyanathan.
Red Bull Ring Race 1 Qualifying Result
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