Aitken tops red flag shortened qualifying in Budapest

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Jack Aitken has taken his second pole position of the season with a fine lap late in this morning’s GP3 Series qualifying session at the Hungaroring, grabbing the top spot just before a red flag brought proceedings to a halt two minutes early ahead of ART teammates George Russell and Nirei Fukuzumi.

The Renault development driver stopped the clocks at 1:31.754, claiming pole by almost two tenths from his disappointed rivals, who will be ruing their luck at not getting their quickest laps in before the session was brought to a halt alongside Arjun Maini’s stopped car on the front straight.

All of the field were straight out on track when the green lights came on, and the warm and sunny conditions meant that the times were soon tumbling: Aitken set the first competitive time but was soon sharing the top spot with his teammates as Fukuzumi, Anthoine Hubert and Russell swapped it between them.

With all of the teams running at the recent test here most of the grid were able to put together a competitive lap, with Raoul Hyman setting quickest sectors but not quite able to string them together, and Dorian Boccolacci also pushing them hard all session long.

5 minutes from the end Aitken drove a great lap to take provisional pole, but more was expected from his rivals: unfortunately for them Arjun Maini was struck by mechanical gremlins and pulled over at turn 1, bringing out the yellow flags before re-starting again, only to grind to a halt just out of the final corner, bringing out the red flags with 2 minutes remaining.

The decision was made to close the session early, to the disappointment of everyone outside of the top 3: Boccolacci, Hubert, Giuliano Alesi, Nico Kari, Kevin Joerg, Alessio Lorandi and Tatiana Calderon will all have expected more, and will be looking to demonstrate their pace in this afternoon’s race 1.

Provisional Qualifying Classification

 Pos

Driver

Team

Laptime

Laps

1.

Jack Aitken

ART Grand Prix

1:31.754

12

2.

George Russell

ART Grand Prix

1:31.936

12

3.

Nirei Fukuzumi

ART Grand Prix

1:32.009

12

4.

Dorian Boccolacci

Trident

1:32.307

13

5.

Anthoine Hubert

ART Grand Prix

1:32.308

12

6.

Giuliano Alesi

Trident

1:32.435

12

7.

Niko Kari

Arden International

1:32.438

13

8.

Kevin Jörg

Trident

1:32.647

12

9.

Alessio Lorandi

Jenzer Motorsport

1:32.701

12

10.

Tatiana Calderon

DAMS

1:32.738

14

11.

Ryan Tveter

Trident

1:32.795

12

12.

Steijn Schothorst

Arden International

1:32.800

13

13.

Arjun Maini

Jenzer Motorsport

1:32.880

12

14.

Marcos Siebert

Campos Racing

1:32.956

11

15.

Raoul Hyman

Campos Racing

1:33.090

10

16.

Julien Falchero

Campos Racing

1:33.269

12

17.

Bruno Baptista

DAMS

1:33.274

12

18.

Leonardo Pulcini

Arden International

1:33.427

11

19.

Matthieu Vaxivière

DAMS

1:33.615

12

source: gp3series.com

 

         

 

 

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