Verschoor pips Antonelli to Baku F2 pole position by 0.017s

Photo: Formula Motorsport Ltd

Richard Verschoor denied Andrea Kimi Antonelli by 0.017 seconds as he scored another street circuit pole position in Formula 2 in Baku.

Trident driver Verschoor, who also claimed pole in Monaco earlier this year, went fastest with all of his flying laps during the session.

He took top spot away from Antonelli with his first attempt and went even quicker with a second effort on his first set of tyres. Both times, Victor Martins slotted into second place ahead of Antonelli.

Championship leader Isack Hadjar was the first driver to get a competitive time on the board at the start of the session, but even a third flying lap on his first set of tyres only put him ninth.

Worse was to come for the Red Bull junior and his Campos Racing team when he started a flying lap on his second set of tyres inside the last five minutes.

In a bizarre and potentially pivotal moment in the championship, Hadjar locked up at the first corner and went deep straight into the tyre barrier, followed almost immediately by his team-mate Pepe Marti. Both drivers were ruled out of the session on the spot, leaving them 15th and 21st at the end, and left to work out with their team what had gone wrong.

The subsequent red flag meant there was time only for one more attempt for everyone else. With the track getting quicker, Kush Maini and Zane Maloney both briefly took top spot only for Antonelli to then go a quarter of a second faster.

Verschoor duly reclaimed pole position, with Martins this time slotting into third behind Antonelli.

After Maloney and Maini came the latter’s Invicta team-mate Gabriel Bortoleto, who beat Joshua Duerksen to sixth by just 0.001s.

On his F2 debut, Gabriele Mini sat as high as fifth after his second flying lap and finished up eighth for Prema. Christian Mansell was just two places further back for Trident to provisionally score reversed-grid pole for his first race in the category, just one place in front of Luke Browning, who had been inside the top 10 with his first two attempts earlier in the session.

Qualifying results