Yuki Tsunoda takes important pole position ahead of the 2020 F2 Sakhir Feature Race

It’s the last F2 weekend of the season. A perfect weekend is needed. One step in the right direction.

Yuki Tsunoda took pole position ahead of the Feature Race as Championship rival Nikita Mazepin joins Tsunoda on the front-row and Jehan Daruvala qualified in third.

The Japanese driver beat Mazepin to pole by over a tenth of a second as the Hitech driver stole a potential front-row lockout for Carlin by nine-thousands which saw Daruvala finish qualifying in third.

Robert Shwartzman qualified fourth as his Championship hopes came tumbling down as he needed a pole position to keep him in with a chance of snatching the prestigious prize at the end of the season.

Last week’s Feature Race winner, Felipe Drugovich, qualified fifth as Christian Lundgaard came sixth. Two-tenths covered the whole of the top six.

Artem Markelov put his car into seventh place, he jumps into the top ten for the first time in qualifying this season. Dan Ticktum qualified eighth, Championship contender Callum Ilott will start ninth and Louis Deletraz in tenth.

The biggest shock is that Championship leader, Mick Schumacher, will start 18th or potentially further depending on if any penalties are put on the German after his crash with Roy Nissany into turn ten during the session.

As It Happened

The last qualifying session of the year got underway as we saw the green light go on at the end of the pit lane.

Felipe Drugovich led the pack away as he started his first flying lap. He would later abort that lap as he went wide out of turn seven and had to recover, regroup and go again.

Christian Lundgaard moved up to first with a lap time of 1:03.190 as Yuki Tsunoda trailed the ART driver by five-hundredths with Nikita Mazepin ending in third after the early flying laps.

After the second round of push laps, Mazepin moved into pole position and Jehan Daruvala missed the chance of dethroning the Russian by nine-thousands as Lundgaard slipped down to third.

Not long after, Drugovich pushed Lundgaard out of the top three, but the Brazillian’s time in the top three was short as Tsunoda jumped on pole moving Mazepin down to second and Daruvala down to third.

Prema Racing decided to go out later than everyone else which saw Schumacher only able to place his car into 16th after his first push lap.

Luca Ghiotto spun off the track out of turn two and that brought out the red flag as his car needed to be moved out of the way which the crane did after a few minutes.

After the session was restarted, Schumacher looked to overtake traffic in his way to start his last push lap. That did not end well as the Prema driver smashed into the Trident of Roy Nissany which prematurely ended the session and left quite a lot of damage on both cars.

The incident is being investigated and we will most likely find out before the Feature Race whether the Championship leader has been struck with a penalty or whether he will get to start from his original qualifying position which is a lowly 18th place anyway.

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