Alice Powell has secured her first pole position of the 2022 W Series season in a frantic qualifying session for the sixth race of the year.
The 2021 W Series runner-up took the third pole of her W Series career at the Hungaroring – more than a year after her second at Silverstone last July. With rain forecasted for today’s race, Alice is now in the prime position to win the fifth W Series race of her career on a track that’s notoriously difficult to overtake.
The Briton, who sits sixth in the championship standings, was two tenths of a second faster than Beitske Visser who will start on the front row for the second straight race, having scored her first W Series pole position at Circuit Paul Ricard last weekend.
Nerea Martí stood on the Hungaroring podium 12 months ago, and the Spaniard will start Saturday’s race where she finished last year’s in third. She will be joined on the second row by compatriot Marta Garcia.
Jamie Chadwick is on the hunt for an eighth straight W Series victory this weekend, but the reigning double champion will have to do it from fifth on the grid – her lowest starting position since the first race of the 2021 season in Austria where she qualified eighth.
Jamie leads Abbi Pulling by 70 points at the top of the championship standings, and the pair will line up alongside each other on the third row after Abbi qualified sixth. Belen García, Emma Kimiläinen, Fabienne Wohlwend, and Jessica Hawkins completed the top 10, who were separated by less than a second.
A third of the way into the 30-minute qualifying session, Beitske led Emma by four one hundredths of a second. They were followed by Jamie before Alice moved into the top three just a few seconds later, pushing Jamie to fourth. That pair improved on their next runs when Alice’s effort was two one hundredths faster than Jamie’s.
Emma leapfrogged Alice and Jamie briefly, before her lap time was deleted for exceeding track limits. However, the Finn improved again on her next run to lead Alice by six one hundredths at the halfway stage when the entire field pitted for fresh tyres.
Less than half a second separated the top 10 with six minutes remaining. Nerea was the first to break out of the pack, beating Emma’s time by two tenths. She was followed over the line by Jamie who knocked a further two tenths off Nerea’s time to hit the front. Beitske went quicker before Nerea went faster still, only for Beitske to set three purple sectors to regain the lead.
With two minutes remaining, the yellow flags were waving in sector three where Bruna Tomaselli and Bianca Bustamante made contact and that incident was being investigated by the stewards after the session. Despite that, Alice took two tenths off Beitske’s best to be the first driver to post a time below 1:43.000, and that proved good enough to secure pole.
Earlier in the day, Beitske took her strong form from France where she scored her first W Series pole position, into Friday morning’s practice in Hungary, leading the way by two tenths of a second from Sarah. Jamie was a further four tenths adrift in third, despite completing fewer laps than any driver due to a clutch issue.
Emma spun at Turn 1 in the closing stages but still finished the session in fourth. Nerea was fifth and Jessica sixth, although the Jessica was given a five-minute time penalty midway through the 30-minute session for exceeding track limits, something several drivers were warned about.
The top 12 were separated by less than a second, and there were only three and a half tenths between Jamie in third and Abbie Eaton in 12th.
Alice Powell said:
“It’s really good to get the first pole for the Bristol Street Motors team. They have worked so hard in that awning. We made quite a few changes from free practice to now and I think all the changes helped. I’m really, really happy but tomorrow it’s going to be wet if you go by the forecast, so we’re going to have to see and it’s going to be pretty interesting. We were alright here last year, even though Jamie [Chadwick] had the legs on the rest of us in the race, but I think it was fairly close in qualifying.”