O’Sullivan takes FIA F3 pole at Hungaroring, Bortoleto ninth fastest

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Prema’s Zak O’Sullivan claimed his second FIA Formula 3 pole at the Hungaroring in a qualifying session that started on damp track.

Rain fell prior to the start, and only Trident’s Leonardo Fornaroli and Gabriel Bortoleto opted for wet-weather tyres at first. As a result, they went one-two on the timesheet while everyone else was over 14 seconds slower and hampered by yellow flags brought out after Rodin Carlin’s Max Esterson spun at turn two on his medium compound slick tyres.

MP Motorsport duo Fanco Colapinto and Mari Boya got within five seconds of Fornaroli’s pace, then as a dry line emerged the slick tyre runners had the advantage.

Van Amersfoort Racing’s Caio Collet lowered the pace by several seconds to 1m45.726s, then red flags were waved as Carlin’s Ollie Gray found the barriers at turn three and had to drag his damaged car back to the pits.

With the clock stopped, the track dried even more during the red flag period and when qualifying restarted the pace was immediately quicker.

Colapinto set a 1m38.317s to go fastest, then Trident’s Oliver Goethe broke into the 1m37s and its was ART Grand Prix’s Nikola Tsolov and Prema’s Paul Aron who sat in second and third behind him.

Next time around the pace for everyone was several seconds faster, and Boya set a 1m35.282s to top the times. Goethe, Aron, Bortoleto and Colapinto also lapped in the 1m35s.

Fornaroli returned to first place on his next lap, setting a 1m34.572s. That put him 0.131s ahead of Aron, before Bortoleto lowered the pace to 1m34.340.

O’Sullivan came to the fore halfway through the session with a 1m34.150s lap. Campos Racing’s Pepe Marti beat it by 0.006s a minute later, and Collet improved to complete a close top four.

Everyone headed to the pits after that to change tyres, and when they returned to track the dry conditions meant DRS was enabled. That led to even larger gains in pace, and O’Sullivan improved to 1m31.091s with four minutes to go.

Prema’s Dino Beganovic went second fastest, and behind him were Fornaroli, Colapinto, Goethe and Tsolov. Aron improved at the very end to qualifying sixth, and points leader Bortoleto set a late personal best but could only qualify ninth.

Qualifying results