Formula 2 News: Stanek wins pole ahead of Crawford at Yas Marina

Roman Stanek put in a superb performance to take a second Aramco Pole Position Award of the season, beating DAMS Lucas Oil’s Jak Crawford and Invicta Racing teammate Leonardo Fornaroli at Yas Marina.

Stanek’s 1:36.836 was good enough to give him pole ahead of Crawford by just 0.087s, with Fornaroli in third, setting Invicta up for a strong weekend with the Teams’ Title on the line.

Sebastián Montoya set the early pace with a 1:37.972 for PREMA Racing, but Crawford picked up from where he left off in Free Practice to go quickest by 0.339s.

Last year’s Feature Race winner Joshua Duerksen was also showing strong form, as he went to within 0.091s of Crawford’s leading time.

On the second push lap, Montoya went quickest again, this time on a 1:37.604, but just before that Duerksen beat him to P1 thanks to a 1:37.464.

After the first set of laps, the Paraguayan driver was on provisional pole by 0.135s, with Fornaroli in second, and Montoya in third.

Heading on to the final laps, Oliver Goethe then went fastest on a 1:37.086, with Dino Beganovic matching the MP Motorsport driver’s time.

They were both quickly beaten by Montoya, and then Crawford, only for Goethe to lose his time for exceeding track limits, dropping him to P16.

Then came Stanek across the line, the Invicta driver completing a 1:36.836 go to the top of the timesheets. Crawford then went up to second, 0.087s off the top time, with Beganovic in third.

There were several drivers improving as the checkered flag was waved, Fornaroli went up to third, leaving Stanek untouched at the top to take his second pole position of the season.

Beganovic went to fourth ahead of Montoya, while Goethe recovered from his time getting deleted, went up to sixth late on, with Victor Martins in seventh.

Duerksen wound up in eighth, ahead of the Campos Racing pairing of Nikola Tsolov and Arvid Lindblad – the teammates set to start on the reverse grid front row for the Sprint Race.

By qualifying in P10, Campos Racing’s Arvid Lindblad – recently announced as an F1 driver for Racing Bulls next year – has secured pole for tomorrow’s F2 sprint race, which takes place at 16:15. The longer feature race, by contrast, happens on Sunday at 13:15, where tire strategy will play a key role. The tire tactics for qualifying today were much more straightforward, with all the drivers benefiting from the speed of the supersoft.

UPDATE

Following the conclusion of the FIA Formula 2 Qualifying session at Yas Marina, Campos Racing’s Nikola Tsolov and DAMS Lucas Oil driver Kush Maini have been penalized.

Firstly, Tsolov has been handed a three-place grid penalty for impeding.

The Bulgarian driver was alleged to have unnecessarily impeded Car 7, Hitech TGR’s Luke Browning during the Qualifying session at Turn 9.

Following a post-race hearing and having heard from both drivers and their team representatives along with examining available video evidence, the Stewards determined that Car 3 could have done more to avoid the incident and had therefore unnecessarily impeded Car 7.

As a result, they elected to hand Tsolov a three-place grid penalty for both the Sprint and Feature Race, as per Article 31.6 of the Formula 2 Sporting Regulations.

Finally, Maini was referred to the Stewards following a post-session inspection by the Technical Delegate, specifically for an alleged breach of Article 24.1 of the FIA Formula 2 Sporting Regulations.

Abu Dhabi Qualifying Results