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Leonardo Fornaroli took pole position ahead of Gabriele Mini and Dino Beganovic in Australia.
How it happened
Trident’s Fornaroli was the early pacesetter, putting in a lap time of 1:33.882 in the first six minutes of Qualifying.
There were a few close calls, Santiago Ramos took a brief trip into the gravel but managed to recover quickly. Both Matias Zagazeta and Tim Tramnitz also went off the track but largely avoided any major damage.
For the second set of fast laps, Fornaroli didn’t improve but managed to hold the top stop ahead of Gabriele Mini, whose second lap got him within 0.020s of provisional pole. Hitech’s Luke Browning was, halfway through the session, the only other drive to get within half a second of Fornaroli’s time.
With thirteen minutes to go, most of the grid came back to the pits to regroup and change tyres. But as precious seconds ticked down, they all came back out for their final runs.
Another brief yellow flag was quickly cleared when Rodin Motorsport’s Piotr Wisnicki stopped on track but was able to continue on shortly after. Drivers continued to improve, Mari Boya jumping into the top five, Sebastian Montoya getting up to tenth.
Then, just as Gabriele Mini set a 1:33.505 to grab provisional pole from Fornaroli, Sami Meguetounif of Trident hit the wall and brought out the red flag with four and a half minutes left in the session.
Notably, also just before the red flag, Nikola Tsolov improved to third. The Bulgarian driver is set to take a three-place grid penalty following an incident with Alex Dunne in practice earlier.
Restart and final laps
After a delay, the green flag was back and the timer started again, giving the drivers just enough time for a final flying lap.
Amidst a flurry of improvements, Fornaroli jumped back to P1 and claimed pole position ahead of Mini. PREMA’s Dino Beganovic grabbed a heavily contested third position from Tsolov, with Nikita Bedrin and Browning completing the top five.
Rookie driver Joseph Loake hit the wall in the final corners and brought out another yellow flag, hindering a few improvements.
Tsolov (still to take a grid penalty), Arvid Lindblad, Oliver Goethe, Christian Mansell, and Martinius Stenshore finished out the top ten, with Laurens Van Hoepen and Mari Boya 11th and 12th to start on the front row for the Sprint Race tomorrow.
Full results can be found here.
Feature Image Credit: Getty Images