Photo: ACI Sport
A stunning lap in first qualifying gave MP Motorsport’s Sebastian Wheldon pole position for Saturday’s Formula Regional Europe race at Zandvoort.
The Anglo-American was the only driver to set a time below 1m30s as he topped the times in Group B at his team’s home event.
Prema’s Kean Nakamura-Berta was equally dominant in Group A but will drop 10 places on the grid after receiving two separate penalties following a wild third race at the Red Bull Ring.
As a result, his team-mate, Halim Sanna will line up alongside Wheldon on the front row for race one.
Reigning Spanish Formula 4 champion Thomas Strauven, making his championship debut with CL Motorsport, set the early pace in the first group with a time of 1m31.408s, before Rodin Motorsport’s Gabriel Gomez and then Nakamura-Berta moved into the 1m30s on their fourth laps.
Nakamura-Berta improved again next time around, as championship leader Reno Francot jumped to second with Rodin’s Alex Ninovic slotting into second.
ART Grand Prix’s Matteo Giaccardi briefly moved into second before he was demoted by the third Prema entry of Tomass Stolcermanis and an improving Ninovic, although Nakamura-Berta had lowered the fastest time to 1m30.136s on the same lap.
In the closing stages, R-ace GP’s Emanuele Olivieri and Francot both dropped in behind the Williams junior although a last lap improvement from Stolcermanis put him back in second, just under two-tenths down on his team-mate.
In comparison, any fight for top spot was effectively over with seven minutes remaining as Wheldon stopped the clocks at 1m29.943s. Though he was subsequently unable to better the time, he did not need to. Nobody else even looked like coming close.
Initially, it was MP team-mate Newman Chi who was his closest pursuer, still 0.390s adrift, before he was demoted by Sanna and ART Grand Prix’s Alexandre Munoz.
Zhi was pushed back to fifth by the third MP car of Alexander Abkhazava, with Mercedes-AMG junior Rashid Al Dhaheri surprisingly only sixth after his impressive drives at the previous round in Austria.
Qualifying results
| Pos | Driver | Team | Group A | Group B | Laps |
| 1 | Sebastian Wheldon | MP Motorsport | 1m29.943s | 9 | |
| 2* | Kean Nakamura-Berta | Prema Racing | 1m30.136s | 9 | |
| 3 | Salim Hanna | Prema Racing | +0.128s | 9 | |
| 4 | Tomass Stolcermanis | Prema Racing | +0.198s | 9 | |
| 5 | Alexandre Munoz | ART Grand Prix | +0.200s | 9 | |
| 6 | Emanuele Olivieri | R-ace GP | +0.264s | 9 | |
| 7 | Alexander Abkhazava | MP Motorsport | +0.231s | 9 | |
| 8 | Reno Francot | CL Motorsport | +0.307s | 9 | |
| 9 | Newman Chi | MP Motorsport | +0.330s | 9 | |
| 10 | Dion Gowda | Van Amersfoort Racing | +0.329s | 9 | |
| 11 | Rashid Al Dhaheri | R-ace GP | +0.355s | 9 | |
| 12 | Alex Ninovic | Rodin Motorsport | +0.377s | 9 | |
| 13 | Yuki Sano | R-ace GP | +0.356s | 9 | |
| 14 | Max Popov | Trident | +0.398s | 9 | |
| 15 | Miguel Costa | RPM | +0.392s | 10 | |
| 16 | Reza Seewooruthun | Rodin Motorsport | +0.470s | 9 | |
| 17 | Jules Roussel | CL Motorsport | +0.460s | 10 | |
| 18 | Gabriel Gomez | Rodin Motorsport | +0.470s | 9 | |
| 19 | Kabir Anurag | ART Grand Prix | +0.609s | 9 | |
| 20 | Matteo Giaccardi | ART Grand Prix | +0.535s | 9 | |
| 21 | Jan Przyrowski | RPM | +0.709s | 10 | |
| 22 | Francisco Macedo | Van Amersfoort Racing | +0.551s | 8 | |
| 23 | Saqer Almousherji | G4 Racing | +0.731s | 9 | |
| 24 | Andrea Dupe | Van Amersfoort Racing | +0.635s | 9 | |
| 25 | Marcus Saeter | G4 Racing | +0.781s | 9 | |
| 26 | Thomas Strauven | CL Motorsport | +0.894s | 9 | |
| 27 | Kai Daryanani | Trident | +0.944s | 9 | |
| 28 | Rahim Alibhai | G4 Racing | +0.954s | 9 | |
| 29 | Giovanni Maschio | RPM | +1.086s | 10 | |
| 30 | Andrija Kostic | Trident | +1.223s | 9 |