The pole positions for the FIA European F3’s Race 2 and Race 3 at Norisring were shared among the two rookie Prema drivers with Robert Shwartzman taking the former and Marcus Armstrong in the latter.
In an opposite formation, the Group B drivers went first in Qualifying 2 with Shwartzman (48.037s) beating teammate Armstrong (48.080s) by a mere 0.043s. Motopark’s Dan Ticktum (48.129s) was third from Carlin’s (48.151s) Jehan Daruvala.
The Group A was topped by HitechGP’s Enaam Ahmed (48.041s) from Motopark’s Juri Vips (48.151s) and Van Amersfoort Racing’s Keyvan Andres (48.152s). Thus, Shwartzman took his maiden pole by a mere 0.004s from Ahmed.
The British driver will start on the front-row in the alternate group formation. Armstrong will share the Row 2 with Vips, while Ticktum in fourth will have Andres alongside him. Daruvala will start from seventh.
He will be joined by his teammate Ferdinand Habsburg (48.158s), as the Top 10 positions will see Motopark’s Marino Sato (48.211s) in ninth and HitechGP’s Alex Palou (48.167s) alongside him.
Positions 11-23: Nikita Troitskiy, Guanyu Zhou, Sacha Fenestraz, Fabio Scherer, Jonathan Aberdein, Artem Petrov, Sebastian Fernandez, Ralf Aron, Ben Hingeley, Mick Schumacher, Ameya Vaidyanathan, Julian Hanses and Petru Florescu.
Qualifying 3:
The second best time from the same session saw Group B’s Armstrong (48.125s) beating Group A’s Vips (48.153s) time by 0.028s. The Kiwi taking his second pole of the weekend as the Estonian has his first front-row start.
Behind, Red Bull junior Ticktum (48.133s) will line-up third with Ferrari junior Zhou (48.208s) alongside him, while Force India junior Daruvala (48.175s) will start in fifth from championship leader Ahmed (48.209s).
Race 2 pole-sitter Shwartzman (48.180s) finished seventh ahead of Palou (48.288s) with Sato (48.234s) securing another Top 10 result from Petrov (48.311s).
Positions 11-20: Troitskiy, Scherer, Fenestraz, Aron, Aberdein, Andres, Fernandez, Habsburg, Hingeley, Schumacher, Vaidyanathan, Hanses and Florescu.