Last gasp GP3 pole for Williamson

A happy Lewis Williamson

MW Arden’s Lewis Williamson pipped his fellow countryman Adrian Quaife-Hobbs to take his first GP3 Series pole position in a frantic qualifying session at the Valencia Street Circuit today. The Manor driver looked like taking the team’s first pole in the Series, but was knocked off the top spot in the final minutes of the session.

Once again the thirty young GP3 drivers had to content with extremely hot conditions as they battled it out for a front row race start. Williamson was first to set a competitive time around the 5.419 km track with Quaife-Hobbs a fraction behind in second spot, but a few minutes into the session and Barcelona’s poleman Mitch Evans took control of the timesheet once again. Also close to the New Zealander’s time were Lotus ART’s Valtteri Bottas, Tech 1 Racing’s Aaro Vainio, Addax Team’s Dean Smith and his teammate Tom Dillmann.

Midway through qualifying Quaife-Hobbs was a mere 0.113 seconds behind Evans, but the Brit found himself bogged down in traffic and unable to complete a clean lap, until with just under ten minutes left in the session he found the space he needed and planted his Manor car at the top of the timesheet with a 1:58.881 lap. Meanwhile, Evans was in the pits with mechanical gremlins and was unable to challenge the Brit. With the clock counting down the final minutes of the session, Quaife-Hobbs looked like he had done enough to keep his top spot, but Williamson had other ideas, and the Scot set his 1:58.693 pole time bumping the Manor driver into second. Soon after, Smith squeezed himself onto the front row.

With two minutes remaining, Evans made it back out on track but couldn’t do anything about the British trio and had to settle for fourth. Vainio was fifth. Despite a clash earlier on the session with Gabby Chaves, Status Grand Prix’s Alexander Sims qualified in sixth ahead of Dillmann, Chaves and the Lotus ART duo of Bottas and Calado. With the top ten drivers covered by just 0.4 seconds, and the top twenty-one with a second, Race 1 later this afternoon promises to be action packed.

Qualifying times:

POS	NO	DRIVER	TEAM	TIME	LAPS	GAP
1	28	L. WILLIAMSON	MW Arden	1:58.693	12	0.000
2	25	D. SMITH	Addax Team	1:58.857	13	0.164
3	10	A. QUAIFE-HOBBS	Marussia Manor Racing	1:58.881	13	0.188
4	26	M. EVANS	MW Arden	1:58.892	6	0.199
5	17	A. VAINIO	Tech 1 Racing	1:58.984	12	0.291
6	4	A. SIMS	Status Grand Prix	1:58.986	13	0.293
7	23	T. DILLMANN	Addax Team	1:58.986	14	0.293
8	24	G. CHAVES	Addax Team	1:59.023	12	0.330
9	2	V. BOTTAS	Lotus ART	1:59.025	13	0.332
10	3	J. CALADO	Lotus ART	1:59.105	12	0.412
11	27	S. TRUMMER	MW Arden	1:59.251	14	0.558
12	31	N. MELKER	RSC Mucke Motorsport	1:59.284	13	0.591
13	6	I. LUKASHEVICH	Status Grand Prix	1:59.322	14	0.629
14	1	P. NUNES	Lotus ART	1:59.360	14	0.667
15	12	M. LAINE	Marussia Manor Racing	1:59.375	14	0.682
16	11	R. HARYANTO	Marussia Manor Racing	1:59.456	15	0.763
17	7	N. MULLER	Jenzer Motorsport	1:59.496	13	0.803
18	30	M. CHRISTENSEN	RSC Mucke Motorsport	1:59.542	12	0.849
19	15	D. MORAD	Carlin	1:59.557	14	0.864
20	29	L. BACHETA	RSC Mucke Motorsport	1:59.627	13	0.934
21	19	T. PAL KISS	Tech 1 Racing	1:59.638	13	0.945
22	20	M. STOCKINGER	Atech CRS GP	1:59.706	13	1.013
23	8	M. ZIMIN	Jenzer Motorsport	1:59.765	14	1.072
24	16	L. CORDEIRO	Carlin	1:59.791	15	1.98
25	14	C. DALY	Carlin	1:59.817	14	1.124
26	21	N. YELLOLY	Atech CRS GP	1:59.895	14	1.202
27	5	A. FELIX DA COSTA	Status Grand Prix	1:59.920	13	1.227
28	9	V. GHIRELLI	Jenzer Motorsport	2:00.011	13	1.318
29	18	T. HYLKEMA	Tech 1 Racing	2:00.083	14	1.390
30	22	Z. AMBERG	Atech CRS GP	2:00.434	13	1.741