Gabriele Mini took feature race pole to start 2025 FIA F2 season in Australia, as Rafael Camara did so in F3.
F2:
Gabriele Minì’s 2025 season got off to a fine start in Melbourne as the PREMA Racing driver beat Victor Martins to Pole Position at an action-packed Qualifying in Albert Park. On his final lap of the session, Minì completed a 1:29.286 to beat the ART Grand Prix driver to the top spot, with Jak Crawford ending up third, over three-tenths behind for DAMS Lucas Oil.
It was a frenetic start to Qualifying though as the drivers jostled for position, Max Esterson and Oliver Goethe even collided at the penultimate corner. Both were forced to return to the pit lane with damage, with the incident prompting a post-session investigation from the Stewards.
Once the flying laps started to come, it was Martins that set the early pace on a 1:31.012, putting him over two-tenths ahead of Minì. Martins then improved to a 1:30.489 on his next attempt, but he was quickly pushed down to third, first by Crawford and then by Minì. Moments later however, Leonardo Fornaroli clocked a 1:30.136 to go fastest.
The majority of the grid chose to return to the pit lane after two push laps, but Fornaroli was able to eke out more performance from his Supersofts. The Invicta Racing driver completed a 1:29.948 to put him 0.230s ahead of Minì. The action resumed with less than eight minutes to go and with his new tyres on, Martins went fastest on a 1:29.523. Crawford went closest to matching the top time, 0.064s behind in second.
The drivers continued to improve and while Martins went quicker on his final attempt, Minì crossed the line late on to take Pole Position with a 1:29.286, beating his ART rival by 0.114s to the top spot. Crawford ended up in third place ahead of MP Motorsport’s Richard Verschoor and Rodin Motorsport rookie Alexander Dunne in fifth.
Roman Stanek was sixth for Invicta ahead of the Hitech TGR pairing of Dino Beganovic and Luke Browning. AIX Racing’s Joshua Duerksen wound up in P9, with Fornaroli set to start from reverse grid pole in the Sprint Race after qualifying 10th.
The drivers of Rodin Motorsport, DAMS Lucas Oil, and TRIDENT will serve a 10-place grid penalty in both the Sprint and Feature Races, this includes Crawford and Dunne inside the top 10. The others are Kush Maini, Amaury Cordeel, Max Esterson and Sami Meguetounif.
Result: https://x.com/MsportXtra/status/1900442289723379878
UPDATE: Following the conclusion of the FIA Formula 2 Qualifying session for Round 1 in Melbourne, Gabriele Minì has been handed two grid penalties. The PREMA Racing driver was summoned to the Stewards for allegedly impeding Car 11, belonging to DAMS Lucas Oil’s Jak Crawford, at Turn 4 in the closing stages of the session.
After hearing from both drivers and PREMA and DAMS team representatives, as well as reviewing available video evidence and telemetry data, the Stewards determined that Minì had unnecessarily impeded Crawford, breaching of Article 31.6 of the FIA F2 Sporting Regulations. As a result, the Stewards have assigned the standard three-place grid penalty to Minì, which as of 2025 applies to both the Sprint and Feature Races.
It moves Victor Martins of ART Grand Prix up to Pole Position. MP Motorsport driver Richard Verschoor is set to join the Frenchman on the front row, following the application of Crawford’s separate penalty, announced earlier in the weekend.
Also, a shakedown has been added to the Timetable of Round 1, ahead of tomorrow’s Formula 2 Sprint Race at Melbourne. Following today’s Free Practice, it was found that power cuts randomly affected several cars, which compromised their performance. A solution was implemented ahead of the Qualifying session, but the issue only partially solved.
Together with the FIA and the Formula 2 teams, Formula 2 is hard at work to understand the origin of the problem and to find a full fix. To that end, a fifteen-minute shakedown has been added to tomorrow’s schedule at 10.25am local time, in order to test this solution ahead of the Sprint Race.
F3:
It was a perfect Friday in Melbourne for Rafael Câmara as he topped both Practice and Qualifying, earning the first Pole Position of 2025. He set a 1:34.999 to lead teammate Noah Stromsted in a great day for TRIDENT. Théophile Nael wound up third, but ended the session under investigation for an unsafe release.
Installation laps complete and it was Roman Bilinski that set the benchmark time initially with a 1:36.125 for Rodin Motorsport. Two purple sectors by Câmara put him in contention until he caught traffic in the final sector and instead slotted into second less than a tenth back. TRIDENT teammate Stromsted then went fastest overall to become the first driver in the 1:35s in Qualifying.
Nikita Bedrin put AIX Racing top of the pile with 10 minutes gone, 1:35.873 the fastest time to beat, while Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak and Ugo Ugochukwu improved to go into the top five in third and fourth respectively. That was until Nael launched Van Amersfoort Racing to provisional Pole at the halfway point with a 1:35.566.
After waiting for clear track, MP Motorsport’s Tim Tramnitz moved into contention to go third fastest, before Câmara strung together a traffic-free lap to storm to P1, half a second clear of anybody else and into the 1:34s. Stromsted then closed that gap down to 0.129s as he improved to P2.
With under 10 minutes to go, the majority of the field then returned to the circuit on fresh tyres for their final attempts of the session. There were only five minutes left on the clock when Brando Badoer found the barriers on the exit of Turn 2, requiring a Red Flag to remove his car from the track.
With Badoer cleared, the session resumed with enough time for some final laps, but another Red Flag followed quickly, as Christian Ho stopped on track in his DAMS Lucas Oil car, while Nael left the pitlane with his airbox still attached to the car. It attracted a post-session investigation from the Stewards.
With such little time on the clock, the session was not resumed. Bedrin wound up fourth with Tramnitz in fifth, and Charlie Wurz in sixth to cap off TRIDENT’s impressive day. Inthraphuvasak ended up in P7, ahead of Ugochukwu, Stenshorne, Bilinski, and Matías Zagazeta, with Santiago Ramos 12th and set to line up on reverse grid pole tomorrow.
Result: https://x.com/MsportXtra/status/1900408310718738888
UPDATE: After the conclusion of Qualifying for Round 1 in Melbourne, PREMA Racing’s Brando Badoer has been penalised. The Italian was the cause of the first Red Flag stoppage during Qualifying, spinning to a halt at Turn 2.
Following the conclusion of Qualifying, the Stewards examined video evidence and heard from both driver and PREMA team representative and determined that Badoer had been solely responsible for the Red Flag, constituting a breach of Article 33.5 of the FIA Formula 3 Sporting Regulations.
As a result, the Italian rookie loses his fastest laptime, which originally put him 19th in the provisional classification for Qualifying. It moves all other drivers who finished behind Badoer up one position each.
[The story is as per press release]
