Photo: Ida Wood
French Formula 4 points leader Esteban Masson will start from pole for race one at Hungaroring this weekend.
Masson led qualifying from the start of the session the end, and actually vacated his car with nearly third of the session to go having got to a point where on his tyres he wasn’t able to match his earlier pace.
The order was set pretty much after the halfway point of the 25-minute session, with Masson taking pole with a 1m46.029s lap, while Maceo Capietto was in second place throughout and improved his pace by one-and-a-half seconds during that time.
He was 0.420 seconds slower than Masson, but then post-session the stewards took away Masson’s fastest lap for a track limits violation. His second-best lap was still good enough for pole by 0.349s, with Capietto holding an advantage of 0.174s over series debutant and British F4 regular Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak who qualified third. Inthraphuvasak bumped Owen Tangavelou and Hugh Barter down a spot each.
Barter and FEED Racing France runner-up Elliott Vayron, who is also a member of Romain Grosjean’s Esports team, were set to share the third row but they also had their fastest laps deleted after qualifying had finished.
That promoted top Junior classification driver Dario Cabanelas to fifth. The Swiss had a messy session with a double spin and off. Gael Julien and Daniel Ligier moved up one spot each to sixth and seventh, while Vayron plunged down to 14th.
Vayron ran in the top five through much of qualifying, but had already had his fastest lap deleted with 14 minutes to go and that dropped him to the back. He was able to bring himself back up the order a few minutes later, but will now make his single-seater racing debut from row seven of the grid.
The laptime deletions also cost Masson what was initially a double pole, with Capietto now starting from the front for race three. He takes pole by 0.051s, with Tangavelou 0.175s back in third.
Absent from the session, as well as the pre-event test and free practice, was Aiden Neate.
Qualifying round-up
Race 1 grid
1 Esteban Masson 1m46.100s
2 Maceo Capietto +0.349s
3 Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak +0.523s
4 Owen Tangavelou +0.541s
5 Dario Cabanelas +0.768s
6 Gael Julien +0.875s
7 Daniel Ligier +0.891s
8 Alessandro Guisti +1.260s
9 Hugh Barter +1.263s
10 Pierre-Alexandre Provost +1.325s
Race 3 grid
1 Capietto 1m36.525s
2 Masson +0.051s
3 Tangavelou +0.176s
4 Inthraphuvasak +0.671s
5 Cabanelas +0.712s
6 Guisti +0.929s
7 Julien +0.945s
8 Noah Andy +1.162s
9 Provost +1.228s
10 Enzo Geraci +1.390s