Barnicoat takes pole on Euroformula cameo at soaked Mugello

Photo: Fotospeedy

Ben Barnicoat continued his successful 2020 junior single-seater return by taking pole for the second Euroformula race at Mugello.

The McLaren sportscar driver joined Carlin for two FIA Formula 3 Championship rounds this summer, then was called up by the British team to aid its Euroformula squad for this weekend.

He led Sunday morning’s wet qualifying session from the very start, with his provisional pole lap dropping from 1m57s territory down to 1m55.833s with 10 minutes of the 25-minute session left to go.

While he didn’t improve on that lap after that, an unbeatable final sector time meant that even as the track dried and other drivers surpassed him through the first two sectors of the lap, he remained in first place to the very end of qualifying.

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Andreas Estner was in second place for much of the session, and on several occasions was able to go faster than Barnicoat through the first two splits but then lost time in the final sector. His front row spot was then lost to points leader Yifei Ye in the final minute, with the CryptoTower driver taking second place by 0.044 seconds.

Ye’s team-mate Lukas Dunner was quick throughout and he ended up in fourth, ahead of VAR’s Sebastian Estner, while Motopark’s Manuel Maldonado made a late improvement to jump up the order and qualify sixth.

His team-mate Niklas Krutten had an off but was seventh fastest, just pipping Cameron Das (Motopark) and Ido Cohen (Carlin).

Zane Maloney rounded out the top 10 in the third of Carlin’s cars, just pipping VAR’s Alexandre Bardinon to the position.

Qualifying results