Isack Hadjar secured his first F3 pole position in a red flagged qualifying at Spielberg.
Red Bull Junior driver, Isack Hadjar, secured his first pole position in Formula 3 with a lap time over two tenths quicker than current championship leader Victor Martins.
The session was slow to start as the 30 strong field battled to gain track position to ensure a clean lap, and ideally, a tow from the car ahead. Bearman and Martins were very closely matched throughout the session, continuously separated by margins as minimal as 0.078s. After the initial bout of push laps the top five were: Martins, Bearman, Leclerc, Frederik and Stanek.
With 10 minutes remaining, the cars raced out for their final push laps and put a representative time on the board. 30 cars leaving the pit lane at once didn’t go without issue as Oliver Bearman was sent out straight into the path of Zak O’Sullivan. The Brits had wheel-to-wheel contact in the pit lane however both drivers and cars came out unscathed. Post-qualifying, Bearman and his team were summoned to the stewards regarding his unsafe release into O’Sullivan. The stewards determined O’Sullivan could not have avoided the collision and so fined PREMA €500.
“I got the instruction to leave the pits from my engineer. It was a bit of a miscalculation from their side, and we made contact…we’ll make sure it doesn’t happen again”
Oliver Bearman in the post-qualifying press conference
Trying to find a decent gap and ensure the opportunity for a tow was crucial for a fast lap time. As a result, in the last few minutes of the session all drivers battled to secure the perfect track position.
With just over 2 minutes left on the clock Hadjar was on a flyer and coming out of nowhere took pole position off Martins by just 0.014s – he then did another impressive lap further distancing himself from his fellow frenchman by 0.2s. it was then that Chovanec crashed, bringing out a red flag.
Due to the busy schedule of the weekend, the session was not resumed leaving Martins and Bearman unable to improve on their earlier laps. The two drivers were clear to share their disappointment to the media in the post-qualifying press conference:
“I was really frustrated when I saw the red flag because I was actually on a really good push lap even though I was alone because I had no tow.”
Victor Martins
“I felt like I was on the lap for pole even, so a bit disappointed, but happy to take P3. It’s the best qualifying I’ve had so far.”
Oliver Bearman
The pole sitter, Isack Hadjar, is the highest placed rookie in the field taking third place in the championship. A successful Friday meant he out-qualified the current leader of the championship, Victor Martins – he leads ahead of Arthur Leclerc in third.