Piastri Beats Daruvala To Pole At Monza as Title Rival Zhou Third

Oscar Piastri took his second Pole position in a row after taking a pole at Silverstone becoming the first repeat polesitter of the season adding four more points to his tally for the season.

Qualifying was again extremely close, Jehan Daruvala achieved his first front row start of the season and was only 0.016 seconds off pole with Piastri’s main championship rival Guan Yu Zhou having to settle for third position but again only 0.051 seconds off pole.

It would be Théo Pourchaire who opened up qualifying, hoping to make the most of the clean air available to him but the Frenchman was down in tenth after the first lot of runs, despite a very quick sector 1.

It was Ralph Boschung the driver who came out last and therefore made the most of a rubbered in track, slotted into first place at the end of the first lot of runs, the Swiss driver registering a time of 1:32.609 to put his Campos at the front.

Championship leader Piastri found his bearings on the next set of laps, stealing first from Boschung by two tenths whilst Ticktum who had lead free practice slotted into third position.

After losing the Championship lead to Piastri in the last round at Silverstone, Zhou needed a big weekend in Italy, but the UNI-Virtuosi racer was initially lagging behind in eighth with 12 minutes to go. Now with a fresh set of tyres on Zhou would manage to improve five places to third when he returned to the track, but was still unable to challenge his main rival Piastri who sat at the top of the timing sheets.

Enough life remained in his tyres for a final attempt with two minutes to go and this time, Zhou did manage to beat Piastri. However, the Australian was just a few places further back and had the advantage of being in a train which would give him the benefit of slipstream and managed to beat the Chinese driver by 0.051s, retaking his position at the top of the timesheet.

Daruvala would also benefit from a slipstream himself to dive into second place and bump Zhou down to third, by a mere 0.016s. Only 0.202s would separate the top five at the end of the session, with Liam Lawson in fourth and Felipe Drugovich fifth. Meanwhile, Boschung equalled his best Qualifying result at this level with sixth, ahead of Pourchaire and Ticktum.

Finishing 10th overall, David Beckmann who has switched teams to Campos will start ahead of Jüri Vips in Saturday’s reverse grid Sprint Race 1, which takes place at 8.50am local time.