Ye on Euroformula pole again at Barcelona, Das denies Dunner front row

Photo: Fotospeedy

Yifei Ye claimed a second Euroformula pole of the day at Barcelona on Friday afternoon, qualifying two spots ahead of title rival Lukas Dunner.

Once again the CryptoTower Racing Team team-mates were closely matched on pace, with Dunner being the faster of the two in the first half of the qualifying session.

He was disputing pole position with Motopark’s Manuel Maldonado and Van Amersfoort Racing’s Andreas Estner at this point, and Ye came into play shortly before the end of the first runs, with Carlin’s Zane Maloney then rising to third.

It took a long time for improvements to come in on the second runs, despite the ‘road sweeping’ of the rubber marbles left by sportscars running in other sessions occurring in the opening few laps of qualifying, and as the sun started to dip lower in the sky the track got warmer – and faster too.

Double R Racing’s Louis Foster was the first to make a major leap up the leaderboard with just a few minutes to go, but once Ye had got up to speed he was able to respond to improvements from Dunner and Estner.

Dunner closed the gap to pole on his penultimate effort, and while Ye didn’t improve he remained on top.

Having crossed the line just before the chequered flag was waved, Motopark’s Cameron Das was able to stay out later than anyone and his final lap put him ahead of Dunner and Estner on the grid.

Maldonado and team-mate Niklas Krutten were fifth and sixth fastest, with Sebastian Estner (VAR) and Glenn van Berlo (Drivex School) – who had been at the top at the very start of the session – in seventh and eighth.

Maloney and Foster rounded out the top 10, with Foster having saved a set of tyres from the previous qualifying session. His debuting team-mate Matthias Luethen was just over two seconds slower in 15th.

Qualifying results