Force India junior and Carlin’s Jehan Daruvala snatched pole for Race 1 in the 2018 FIA European Formula 3 Championship at Spa-Francorchamps from Prema’s Marcus Armstrong.
The Indian’s first lap was disrupted in the final sector but he came back well to take the top spot by just the 0.010s margin over Ferrari junior Armstrong. The Kiwi took provisional pole from teammate Guanyu Zhou, but showed no improvements then after.
Daruvala was fifth on his first flying lap, improved to second on his second lap before eventually taking pole with a 2m12.983s after a purple S1 on his final lap. This is his first pole of the season and only second since last year’s Monza weekend.
Championship leader Armstrong (1m12.993s) will start alongside Daruvala with HitechGP’s Alex Palou (2m13.392s) managing to beat the Prema trio Zhou (2m13.351s), Ralf Aron (2m13.357s) and Robert Shwarztman (2m13.469s) to be third.
It turned out to be a good run for HitechGP as Enaam Ahmed (2m13.579s) finished seventh ahead of Ben Hingeley (2m13.673s), while the leading Motopark was of Juri Vips (2m13.933s) in ninth with teammate Jonathan Aberdein (2m13.822s) in 10th.
While Vips and Aberdein found themselves inside the Top 10, but their teammate and title contender Dan Ticktum was only 13th with a 2m13.922s lap time, while Prema’s Mick Schumacher (2m14.203s) was only 17th.
It was a delayed start to the session due to some track repairs which gave the drivers less time for qualifying. Since it is a long lap, most drivers were left with only two to maximum three flying laps to clock their fastest lap.
Position 11-24: Nikita Troitskiy, Sacha Fenestraz, Ticktum, Sophia Floersch, Marino Sato, Sebastien Fernandez, Schumacher, Artem Petrov, Fabio Scherer, Ferdinand Habsburg, Julian Hanses, Ameya Vaidyanathan, Keyvan Andres and Petru Florescu.