Doohan Blazes His Way to Pole Position in Barcelona

Virtuosi Racing’s Jack Doohan took his second pole position of the 2022 FIA Formula 2 season after setting a ferocious lap on a scorching day at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

The Australian driver will start ahead of Hitech Grand Prix’s Jüri Vips on the front-row of Sunday’s Feature Race grid after beating him to pole by just two-hundredths of a second with the Estonian setting a late lap which looked like it would topple the Alpine junior’s effort.

Frederick Vesti rounded out the top three qualifiers, with the third place grid start being his best starting grid position in the second-tier to date. He was two tenths off Doohan’s pace-setting time but it was enough to bump PREMA Racing’s Jehan Daruvala down into fourth position.

After two red flags in the morning Free Practice session, Qualifying was completely incident free. The biggest challenge that the drivers faced was getting their soft-compound Pirelli tyres into the optimum operating temperature and keeping them there with track temperatures soaring above thirty-nine degrees celsius.

Credit: Formula Motorsport Limited

Many of the drivers seemed to set very competitive times in the first two sectors, but it was the final sector where some struggled to keep the tyres within their said working range which saw them fall short of where they wanted to be.

The championship leader, Théo Pourchaire, set the seventh fastest time of the session and had a slight incident with the driver directly below him in the standings, Felipe Drugovich. The young Frenchman felt that the MP Motorsport driver impeded him at turn one just before he started his final flying lap, ending Pourchaire’s chance of being able to set a faster time.

Drugovich will start Saturday’s Sprint Race on reverse-grid pole, alongside Trident’s Calan Williams who set the ninth fastest time and was around half a second off the pace.

Carlin’s Logan Sargeant will start on the third row of Sunday’s Feature Race grid in fifth, alongside DAMS’ Ayumu Iwasa who qualified in sixth position. Van Amersfoort Racing’s Jake Hughes rounds out the top ten qualifiers in eighth position.