Invicta Racing’s Leonardo Fornaroli produced a late qualifying effort to deny Victor Martins pole for Sunday’s Formula 2 feature race at Sakhir
Fornaroli was quickest by 0.155 seconds in the 30-minute session, with ART Grand Prix’s Martins second ahead of fellow Williams F1 Academy member and Hitech GP driver Luke Browning.
Martins set an early benchmark of 1m45.100s on his first qualifying run to lead Invicta’s Roman Stanek by 0.192s, with Gabriele Mini third ahead of his Prema team-mate Sebastian Montoya.
Rodin Motorsport’s Alex Dunne soon moved within 0.002s of the pace to claim second, and Fornaroli then went fastest by almost half a second with a new best of 1m44.642s.
While several drivers sat in the pits at the halfway stage, MP Motorsport’s Richard Verschoor climbed up to second before being swiftly displaced by Campos Racing’s Pepe Marti who reduced Fornaroli’s advantage to 0.223s, and Browning moved into fourth.
Drivers commenced their second runs on new tyres in the closing stages, and Martins reclaimed first place with two minutes of the session remaining by posting a 1m44.163s.
Mini improved to third and Montoya to seventh, but both were soon shuffled down the order. Verschoor reclaimed second only to be again almost immediately pushed back to third, this time by Stanek. Browning then beat the pair but was also denied a front-row spot.
That was due to Fornaroli producing a late response to snatch top spot with a 1m44.008s and Dunne, meanwhile, climbed to fourth ahead of Stanek. Verschoor slipped back to sixth, and Trident’s Sami Megeutounif grabbed seventh with his final effort.
Van Amersfoort’s Rafael Villagomez and Hitech’s Dino Beganovic were eighth and ninth respectively, while AIX Racing’s Joshua Duerksen is set to start Saturday’s sprint race from reversed-grid pole after edging Marti and Mini to 10th. Montoya, meanwhile, ended up in 18th.
Featured image credit: Formula 2 on X
