Qatar – Qualification: Goethe penalized, Fornaroli and Martins in the front row

It had been more than two months since the F2 had not raced in support of a weekend of F1Qatar is the scene of some early surprises this week. While Oliver Goethe had secured pole position in the final minute of the session, the German was on the verge of becoming the first MP Motorsport driver to achieve this position in qualifying this season. Effective and dangerous throughout the session, the driver, supported by Red Bull He managed his exit timing better than Leonardo Fornaroli, who finished second, but suffered a damaging penalty. Found guilty of impeding Martinius Stenshorne on his flying lap, the pole-sitter was stripped of his position. He will therefore serve a three-place grid penalty for the two weekend races, placing him fourth in the feature race, but more importantly, 13th in Saturday's Sprint.

In this instance, the Invicta driver, leading the championship by 19 points over Jak Crawford, missed out on Sunday's front-row start by a mere 40 thousandths of a second, but will indeed start from pole position on Sunday. He notably finished ahead of Victor Martins (ART GP), who crossed the line in third place by less than two tenths of a second. Leonardo Fornaroli's teammate, Roman Stanek, therefore leads the second row in an Invicta that has proven remarkably competitive on all tracks since this summer, and will start ahead of Oliver Goethe.

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As things stand, five drivers are still mathematically in contention for the F2 title before the start of the various races in Qatar. Behind Leonardo Fornaroli, Jak Crawford made things difficult for himself from the outset on Friday, as the American could only manage fifteenth place in qualifying. Luke Browning, in 18th, paid dearly for a mistake made three minutes from the end of qualifying, running wide onto his already damaged tires in a gravel trap. Alex Dunne and Richard Verschoor, fifth and tenth respectively, can still hope to score valuable points. The Dutchman will notably start from pole position in Saturday's sprint race due to the reverse grid rule.

Finally, it remains to note the outstanding performance achieved by Nikola Tsolov aboard the car Campos. Resident of F3 And making his F2 debut this weekend with the team he will join next year, the Bulgarian driver climbed to 7th place, surpassing Arvid Lindblad, who finished 17th, by more than half a second. The rest of the action, following this established order, will be available to watch from 17:10 PM (French time) on Saturday for the Sprint in Qatar.

F2 – Qatar (Losail)
The qualification ranking