Sette Camara beats Ilott to Abu Dhabi F2 pole

Photo: Joe Portlock

DAMS’ Sergio Sette Camara took his third career Formula 2 pole in Abu Dhabi qualifying, beating Sauber junior Callum Ilott.

For much of the session it was Ilott who sat at the top of the timesheet, with Sette Camara only bettering the Briton’s benchmark in the last few minutes by less than a tenth of a second.

This shuffled Carlin duo Louis Deletraz and Nobuharu Matsushita down to third and fourth, with Deletraz having been engaged in battle with Ilott for much of the session over first place.

After a slow start, Virtuosi Racing’s Guanyu Zhou and ART Grand Prix’s champion Nyck de Vries rose up to qualify fifth and sixth, with newly announced 2020 Williams Formula 1 driver Nicholas Latifi being bumped down to seventh.

Jack Aitken (Campos Racing), Nikita Mazepin (ART) and Mick Schumacher (Prema) completed the top 10.

The only notable incident in the session was when Schumacher’s team-mate Sean Gelael spun, with the resultant yellow flag cutting short some flying laps, while Aitken was late to appear in his car at the start of the session.

Qualifying results