Rafael Câmara was the one to beat once again, as the TRIDENT driver took his second consecutive Pole Position of the season, beating out Callum Voisin in an action-packed Sakhir Qualifying.
A closely fought encounter between the pair, the Brazilian’s late 1:49.214 was enough for P1, while the Rodin Motorsport driver ended up 0.156s down in second, with TRIDENT’s Charlie Wurz in third.
It was Nikola Tsolov that set the early benchmark though of a 1:50.506, putting the Campos Racing driver 0.169s clear of DAMS Lucas Oil’s Christian Ho, with James Wharton just behind in P3 for ART Grand Prix.
The entire field was back in the pit lane with 18 minutes left in the session, but after a quick change of tyres, they were out on track for the second set of push laps on their new rubber.
There were plenty of improvements and on this occasion, it was Voisin on provisional pole, thanks to a 1:49.882, putting him just 0.023s ahead of MP Motorsport’s Alessandro Giusti.
Câmara went to third ahead Tsolov this time around, before the drivers returned to the pit lane to put on another new set of new tyres, ahead of a third and final attempt.
Setting his lap earlier than the rest of the field, Câmara went to P1 with a 1:49.214. Voisin set the fastest first sector but could not overhaul the TRIDENT driver and ended up second, 0.156s down.
Charlie Wurz left it late to make it two TRIDENT cars in the top three, while Ho finished fourth for DAMS ahead of MP’s Bruno del Pino.
Tuukka Taponen was the lead ART driver in P6 ahead of Noah Stromsted, while Tsolov wound up in P8, with Giusti in ninth.
AIX Racing’s Freddie Slater was 10th, in front of the Hitech TGR pairing of Martinius Stenshorne and Joshua Dufek, who rounded out the top 12.
This means Dufek will lead an all-Hitech front row when we reverse the grid in the Sprint Race, which is set to start at 13:15 local time tomorrow.
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