Fornaroli’s two-lap pace for pole makes rivals reflect on one-lap strategy

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Key to Leonardo Fornaroli’s Formula 2 pole at the Red Bull Ring was improving on his final flying lap, which his closest rivals failed to do.

On both qualifying runs, the Invicta Racing driver went faster on his second flying lap and earned pole by 0.014 seconds over ART Grand Prix’s Victor Martins. MP Motorsport’s Richard Verschoor was 0.024s behind.

Their peak pace came on the first flying lap of their final run, split up by cooldown laps. While the pair dwelled on where they lost time, Fornaroli admitted to not maximising qualifying either.

“To be honest, all day I’m struggling in sector three,” he revealed. “I thought I was on the limit, but I did the mistake in the last corner, bit of margin in [turn] nine, so that’s where I lost all the time. But sector one and two, even if they weren’t perfect for me, there was still good to do P1.”

Fornaroli said he “prefered to have clean air” as he explained his run plan.

“During the first lap, I never go super aggressive, apart from tracks like Bahrain, Barcelona where you know you have only one lap. But here when you can have consecutive laps, well at least for me, I never go super aggressive in the first lap to have still good tyres to improve in the second lap.”

Martins “felt there was a few mistakes” so “could have easily won 0.014s”, and had no perference for clean air or a tow due to lacking data for a thorough cost-benefit analysis of the two options. However he was committed to getting the most out of the first flying lap on his runs.

“I’m more on the approach of pushing a lot from the beginning, trying to reach the limit straight away. I’m quite confident to do that. I know some drivers they like to build up. Me, I’m quite confident to actually go over it and feel where I can improve them for the next set. On the first set, I just felt that would be probably on a one-lap tyre.”

He added that “I don’t think if I was saving in lap one, I would have done better in lap two” and “felt that I had to deliver lap one like I did”.

“Maybe [Invicta] have the car suiting more for two laps, us more for one lap. Then you need to adapt to it. I just know if I didn’t push 100% lap one, I wouldn’t be sitting P2 here,” Martins explained.

“There’s different approaches we need to analyse, because who is on pole has done two laps.”

Verschoor went tow-free as “I could really feel that I was losing downforce in the corners” when using one in practice.

“I felt on the first set that the grip on lap one was by far the best for me. So I did actually go all out on the first push of the second set, and I think that made me be here [in P3].”

Difference between flying laps on final qualifying run