Callum Ilott makes it pole position number five ahead of the 2020 F2 Bahrain Feature Race

Callum Ilott decreased the gap in the Championship hunt to 18 points as he took pole position and four bonus points. Felipe Drugovich qualified alongside Ilott on the front row in second and Dan Ticktum in third.

The UNI-Virtuosi driver took his fifth pole position ahead of the 2020 F2 Bahrain Feature Race. Felipe Drugovich qualified on the front row for the third time this season as Dan Ticktum picked up the pace and a good qualifying from the DAMS driver put him into third.

Marcus Armstrong put in a fantastic qualifying as he was the superior ART driver and qualified in fourth. Ilott’s teammate, Guanyu Zhou, looked to stay alive and hunt the top six in the Championship as his lap was only good to qualify fifth.

Giuliano Alesi, who made a switch to MP Motorsport in place of Nobuharu Matsushita, qualified sixth before he brought out the red flag due to his car being on fire. Nikita Mazepin is the closest title contender to Ilott on the grid and he’s in seventh ahead of the Feature Race.

Jehan Daruvala was the highest placed Carlin as he slotted his car into eighth alongside another Championship contender in Christian Lundgaard who was only good enough for ninth.

Championship leader, Mick Schumacher, qualified tenth which looks like he’ll be doing a recovery drive alongside Louis Deletraz in P11. Roy Nissany and Pedro Piquet qualified P12 and P13 as Robert Shwartzman qualified P14 and hoping he can pull off one of his recover drives.

Jack Aitken qualified P15 with Theo Pourchaire in P16 on his debut in F2. Marino Sato qualified P17, Sean Geleal in P18, Guilherme Samaia in P19, Luca Ghiotto in P20 and Artem Markelov in P21.

The big shock of the weekend so far is that Yuki Tsunoda will start from the back of the grid in P22 after a spin-out of Turn 12 on his flying lap which took him out of qualifying.

As It Happened

All the drivers peeled out of the pits for the first time in eight weeks as they got the qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix underway.

Felipe Drugovich was the first driver to start a flying lap. A lap time of 1:42.107 saw the Brazillian go to the top of the timing charts. Marcus Armstrong put his car on pole position not long after he went five-hundredths faster than the MP Motorsport driver.

Callum Ilott was one of the last drivers out on the circuit and on his first attempt went almost six-tenths quicker than Armstrong.

The session was red-flagged after Yuki Tsunoda’s spin at Turn 12 ruined his qualifying and put all the remaining 21 drivers back into the pits.

A few minutes later, the session was restarted as Tsunoda’s car was finally off the track and his qualifying was officially over.

Drugovich and Dan Ticktum improved to second and third respectively, but Ilott still had a four-tenth advantage over the Brazillian.

Ten minutes remained in the session, Ilott was on provisional pole with Drugovich in second and Ticktum in third. Armstrong was fourth, Guanyu Zhou in fifth, Louis Deletraz in sixth, Roy Nissany in seventh, Jehan Daruvala in eighth, Pedro Piquet in ninth and Christian Lundgaard rounded off the top ten.

Championship leader, Mick Schumacher, went out on his final flying lap which saw him move up to sixth but dropped to tenth as Giuliano Alesi, Nikita Mazepin, Daruvala and Lundgaard pushed the German back to tenth.

Drugovich looked to put his car on pole with his final run. A poor middle sector saw the Brazillian go all guns blazing with his final sector. Sector three was purple, but he was unable to gain the time in sector one and two as he remained second and Ilott stayed on pole to claim his fifth of the season.

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