Qualifying: Crawford on pole in Baku after late Red Flag
Baku, September 19, AZERTAC
Jak Crawford earned the Aramco Pole Position Award in Baku for DAMS Lucas Oil, a 1:54.791 handing the American his first pole since Jeddah, according to the Formula 2 official website.
Championship leader Leonardo Fornaroli had to settle for second, the Invicta Racing driver just 0.019s off the top spot, with Gabriele Minì third for PREMA Racing.
The first round of laps arrived with Roman Stanek laying down the time to beat on a 1:55.985 for Invicta Racing. Alexander Dunne picked up from where he left off in Practice, going quicker than anyone else shortly afterwards as he put in a 1:55.843 to lead.
Teammate Amaury Cordeel then brought out the Red Flags shortly afterwards, tagging the barriers at Turn 13 that left him with session-ending damage.
Qualifying resumed with 22 minutes left, with Dunne at the front of the queue as things got back underway.
Dunne improved his time to a 1:55.569 but moments later, Browning matched that time exactly to slot into second.
Leonardo Fornaroli then smashed that, with his 1:55.191 putting the Championship leader top of the pile. That was until Crawford bettered him by just 0.399s to go onto provisional pole.
PREMA Racing’s Gabriele Minì split the pair, going ahead of his compatriot and into second by just 0.001s.
Dunne had looked to be going for another lap with a purple sector one but contact with the wall left him with damage. He aborted the lap and returned to the pit lane.
His rivals remained on circuit, but the majority opted to come back in, though Fornaroli delivered an improvement to go up to second, 0.019s off Crawford’s earlier effort.
With fresh Supersoft Pirelli tyres fitted, drivers returned to the track with just under 10 minutes left on the clock.
Dunne was the last to get back out on track after the Rodin Motorsport mechanics made repairs to his front-right suspension.
The next set of laps got started but were quickly abandoned after Victor Martins found the barriers at Turn 3. The ART Grand Prix driver was out of the car and OK, but the Red Flags were waving once again with just over four minutes left of the session.
Following the barrier repairs, Qualifying resumed and there was a rush to get ideal track position for one final attempt.
Dunne delivered the fastest first sector just before the Red Flags were back out following a crash for Roman Stanek and John Bennett at Turn 1.
It gave Crawford top of the pile ahead of Fornaroli and Minì. Martins wound up fourth, Dunne followed in fifth ahead of Browning in sixth. Josep María Martí followed ahead of debutant Martinius Stenshorne, Stanek and Sebastián Montoya in P10.
The Formula 2 Sprint Race in Baku is set to get underway on Saturday at 14:15 local time.
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