Off the back of his maiden victory last time out in Spa-Francorchamps, Zane Maloney claimed his second Formula 3 pole in a dramatic ending to qualifying in Zandvoort.
Once again, it was a tale of two halves for the title contenders. Victor Martins bounced back to secure second ahead of rivals Jak Crawford, Roman Stanek and Isack Hadjar. However, disaster struck for Ferrari juniors Oliver Bearman and Arthur Leclerc, both crossing the line moments after a late red flag, undoing all their efforts. The PREMA Racing pair will now line up in P14 and P20 for both races.
F2: Drugovich secures second-straight pole in stop-start Zandvoort session
Eager to get banker laps in, the whole field headed out early, as Martins initially led the way with a 1m 25.152s, a tenth quicker than Franco Colapinto. The Alpine Academy junior continued to strengthen his advantage into the second half of the session, improving on his previous best efforts by four tenths.
Attention soon turned to Maloney, as the Trident driver set a new benchmark of 1m 24.386s with eight minutes left on the clock.
Track evolution looked to be playing into several drivers’ hands, but most wouldn’t get to take full advantage of it. With less than a minute remaining and a stream of cars reaching the chequered flag, William Alatalo found the barriers at Turn 3 to bring out the red flags.
Luckily for Martins, the ART Grand Prix driver completed his lap with seconds to spare to hold on to second, while Hadjar moved up the order.
Colapinto claimed fourth for Van Amersfoort Racing and Sebastian Montoya put in a stellar performance on his F3 debut to secure seventh. All three Tridents took their places inside the top 10 as Red Bull junior Jonny Edgar ended the session eighth ahead of Caio Collet and Zak O’Sullivan.
Juan Manuel Correa will be looking to bring home his first podium of the 2022 season when he and ART teammate Gregoire Saucy line up on the Sprint Race front row. The lights go out at 1025 local time on Saturday.
For more on F3 qualifying in Zandvoort, check out the full report on the official Formula 3 website.
