Tsunoda takes first F2 pole in tight qualifying

Having been fastest in the morning’s practice session, Yuki Tsunoda sweeped Friday to take pole position for the first time in his FIA Formula 2 career.

He got the job done during the first flying laps as no one could improve significantly at the end of the session meaning the Carlin driver’s time of 1:14:803 wasn’t beaten.

He will have the UNI-Virtuosi duo of Guanyu Zhou and Callum Ilott breathing down his neck in second and third on the grid but it could’ve been even better for the Chinese racer had Mick Schumacher not got in the way on his initial final flying lap. Zhou had set a purple first sector before taking evasive action from the slow PREMA.

Luca Ghiotto brought some much needed joy to Hitech GP in qualifying fourth ahead of Jack Aitken who’s improvement was also very handy.

Behind those two experienced F2 drivers came a trio of rookies who all impressed during round one, Robert Shwartzman qualified sixth from Jehan Daruvala and Christian Lundgaard and even more impressively, beating his PREMA teammate Schumacher who was ninth.

Felipe Drugovich was much better than his practice paced suggested as he ended the session tenth ahead of Marino Sato who had his best qualifying for a long time.

The Charouz cars of Pedro Piquet and Louis Delétraz qualified seventeenth and eighteenth respectively but will both serve a one-place grid penalty for driving from the F2 paddock to the F1 pit lane on wet tyres at the start of practice.