Mini beats Beganovic to take Monaco F3 pole

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Gabriele Mini beat his former Formula Regional rival Dino Beganovic to take pole position on Formula 3’s return to Monaco.

In the first group of the split qualifying session, Monaco debutant Luke Browning was on top until Beganovic bettered his time by just 0.003 seconds as the chequered flag came out.

Browning was already responding to that with the fastest first sector, but was down in sector two before cutting across the chicane at the exit of the Swimming Pool section and giving up on this lap.

Just as he did that, his Hitech GP team-mate Sebastian Montoya hit the barriers and broke his rear-right suspension, effectively ending the session.

Practice pacesetter Mini dominated the second group, and with five minutes to go was up by half a second on the pace that had been set by team-mate Browning at the same stage in the first segment.

However, Mini only improved by nine thousandths of a second on his next attempt, with a quarter of a second still to find to beat Beganovic’s benchmark.

He would do that in style on his final attempt, a 1m23.278s putting him a second clear of his Group B rivals and clear of Beganovic’s time by six tenths.

Paul Aron improved on his final lap but was still 0.874s short of Mini as he took third on the grid. Caio Collet survived a scrape with the barriers at Tabac to take third in the group and will lead Montoya on row three for Sunday’s feature race.

Championship leader Gabriel Bortoleto was only fourth in Group B and will line up seventh ahead of Franco Colapinto.

With the top 12 for the feature race being reversed to set the sprint race grid, Gregoire Saucy will start on pole ahead of Pepe Marti, Leonardo Fornaroli and Taylor Barnard.

Qualifying results