Photo: Roger Gascoigne
Alessandro Giusti claimed his first two pole positions of the French Formula 4 season in qualifying at Ledenon.
The second-year driver, who picked up two wins and a pole in 2021, pipped championship leader Hugh Barter to top spot by just 0.026 seconds with an early lap, and by a similarly slim 0.063s for race three where the grid is set from each driver’s second-best laptimes.
Edgar Pierre sat atop the times when the first flying laps came in, then Barter went fastest next time by. Giusti moved to the top as the field completed their third flying laps, and the 1m21.478s he set would end up being unmatched for the rest of qualifying.
Barter sat a close second and did improve with his fourth effort, but he too then could find no pace. Enzo Peugeot got himself into third, and there was a later change for fourth place as Dario Cabanelas got himself onto the second row of the grid with a sub-1m22s lap with 10 minutes to go of qualifying.
He then got shuffled down to sixth though as late on Pierre set a lap could enough for fourth, and Honda junior Souta Arao also improved to sneak into fifth. The session ended with yellow flags at turn three after Valentino Mini went off into the gravel, and earlier on Enzo Richer had also had an issue at the corner. The other point of drama on track was turn 15, where many laps were deleted due to the exceeding of track limits and eventually leading to Romain Andriolo getting a warning flag.
Lorens Lecertua, who had convicingly set the pace in free practice, was only 13th fastest in qualifying.
Qualifying round-up
Race 1 grid
1 Alessandro Giusti 1m21.478s
2 Hugh Barter +0.026s
3 Edgar Pierre +0.364s
4 Enzo Peugeot +0.446s
5 Souta Arao +0.497s
6 Dario Cabanelas +0.516s
7 Elliott Vayron +0.590s
8 Yuto Nomura +0.613s
9 Pierre-Alexandre Provost +0.653s
10 Max Reis +0.733s
Race 3 grid
1 Giusti 1m21.498s
2 Barter +0.063s
3 Pierre +0.458s
4 Cabanelas +0.550s
5 Arao +0.564s
6 Peugeot +0.575s
7 Nomura +0.624s
8 Provost +0.658s
9 Vayron +0.838s
10 Romain Andriolo +0.856s