Pulling seals F1 Academy crown as Pin takes victory in Qatar

Photo: James Gasperotti

Rodin Motorsport’s Abbi Pulling clinched the F1 Academy title by finishing second in the opening race of the weekend in Qatar, while Doriane Pin took a commanding victory.

A third win of the season was not enough to keep Pin’s title hopes alive, while her team-mate Maya Weug finished third to complete a double podium for Prema. Pulling sealed the championship with three races to spare, and her prize is a fully-funded drive in GB3 with Rodin next season.

Lining up from third on the grid and needing a top-two finish to guarantee herself the crown, Pulling’s crucial move came in the first two corners.

Polesitter Pin was challenged on the outside approaching turn one by fellow front-row starter Weug, but Pulling took the opportunity to sneak up the inside of Weug before taking second away from the Ferrari Academy member into turn two.

The battle between the front three fizzled out from there, with Pin edging almost two seconds clear during the first two laps and continued to pull away before taking victory by 6.7 seconds in the 14-lap contest, while Weug came home 3s behind Pulling in third.

MP Motorsport’s Hamda Al Qubaisi and Prema’s wildcard driver Alisha Palmowski both passed ART Grand Prix’s Lia Block at the start into fourth and fifth. Al Qubaisi resisted early pressure from Palmowski before finishing fourth, while Palmowski faded in the race’s second half but took fifth on her debut.

Block finished close behind Palmowski in sixth, while Campos Racing’s Nerea Marti shadowed initially shadowed the pair before losing out in three-wide squabble with her team-mate Chloe Chambers and Rodin Motorsport’s Jessica Edgar on the final lap.

Chambers prevailed in that battle to intially climb to seventh, but a five-second time penalty shuffled her out of the points to 11th at the finish, with Edgar inheriting the position by coming home 0.5s ahead of Marti.

ART’s Bianca Bustamante was another to slip out of the points late on after dipping a wheel in the gravel exiting turn four and then spinning. That allowed her team-mate Aurelia Nobels, who was earlier involved in a dice with Chambers, to move up to ninth ahead of MP’s Emely de Heus.

Race result (14 laps)