Giusti on FREC pole at Red Bull Ring as track limits cost Antonelli

Photo: FRECA

Alessandro Giusti maintained his impressive recent form to take pole for Formula Regional European Championship race two at the Red Bull Ring.

Prema’s Andrea Kimi Antonelli will line up alongside him on the front row after topping Group A with a time 0.087 seconds slower than Giusti’s best lap.

Antonelli actually posted a faster time which would have been good enough for pole, but his 1m26.593s was immediately deleted for exceeding track limits at turn nine.

As usual at the Red Bull Ring, track limits at turns nine and 10 caused the deletion of multiple laptimes, with 19 drivers in total being guilty at least once.

The pace improved steadily throughout the first session for the drivers in Group B, with the 10th and final lap proving decisive.

Race Performance Motorsport’s Santiago Ramos and Trident’s Nikhil Bohra were the first to break to lap sub-1m27s on their seventh tours, and Giusti moved up to second next time around.

Arden’s Tom Lebbon enjoyed his best qualifying session of the year, moving into third, just 0.08s down on Giusti.

Lebbon went faster still on his ninth lap, but track limits cost him that laptime and significantly the opportunity to improve on the following lap, his final one.

The deletion dropped him behind R-ace GP’s Martinius Stenshorne, who will line up on row three. After the session, the unfortunate Lebbon was penalised again, dropping to 10th in the group after his best remaining lap was also deleted.

The first minutes of Group A’s session featured everyone bunching up as drivers tried to avoid leading the field, causing MP Motorsport’s Sami Meguetounif to run wide through the gravel in avaoidance.

A spin from KIC Motorsport’s Maya Weug brought out red flags with just under seven minutes to go, with representative laptimes yet to be set.

When running resumed, Antonelli was straight on the pace, setting a 1m 27.109s on his seventh lap to go top, ahead of R-ace’s Tim Tramnitz.

Despite losing his next laptime, Antonelli continued to push to set Group A’s fastest lap on his penultimate tour.

Traffic and another off from Weug prevented late improvements from either Antonelli or Tramnitz, both of whom had looked on course to go faster.

Tramnitz went fastest of all in the first two sectors on his ninth lap before backing off in the final sector as he came up on a gaggle of cars. After being hindered again on his final lap he had to settle for fourth, with Meguetounif leaping ahead of Trident’s Owen Tangavelou to take second in Group A on his final lap.

Race one poleman and winner Rafael Camara failed to improve on his final two laps to end up fifth, after R-P-M’s Maceo Capietto’s fastest lap was deleted and he dropped from fifth to 11th in the group.

Series returnee Hadrien David will line up on the eighth row for Monolite Racing.

Qualifying results