Guanyu Zhou took pole position in qualifying ahead of Sunday’s Feature Race in Bahrain

The Chinese driver will lineup in first on Sunday’s Feature Race alongside Christian Lundgaard in second and UNI-Virtuosi teammate Felipe Drugovich in third.

Dan Ticktum will be next to the Brazillian driver in fourth with Red Bull Academy driver Juri Vips in fifth. Richard Verschoor’s follows in sixth, Ticktum’s teammate Jehan Daruvala in seventh, last season’s Formula 3 champion Oscar Piastri in eighth with Liam Lawson and David Beckmann rounding off the top ten.

Looking further down the grid, Theo Pourchaire qualified P11 with Robert Shwartzman down in P12 after losing power and bringing out the red flag.

Ralph Boschung finished P13, Marcus Armstrong in P14, Roy Nissany in P15, Bent Viscaal in P16, Lirim Zendeli in P17, Guilherme Samaia in P18, Marino Sato in P19, Matteo Nannini in P20 with Gianluca Petecof and Alessio Deledda at the back of the grid in P21 and P22 respectively.

As it happened

The drivers poured out of the pit lane for the first time this season as this qualifying session would set the starting order for Sunday’s Feature Race and tomorrow’s first Sprint Race.

Lundgaard set the early pace with a 1:43.628, two-tenths quicker than Armstrong in second and four-tenths quicker than Ticktum in third.

After the first 10 minutes of qualifying, Drugovich topped the timing charts with a 1:43.315 and was three-tenths ahead of Lundgaard’s ART who dropped down to second and four-tenths quicker than Daruvala in third.

All the drivers peeled into the pits after their first runs and the only driver that was left on the circuit was Zhou who decided to run when the track was all clear.

That tactic worked for the UNI-Virtuosi driver as he moved to provisional pole, two-hundredths faster than Drugovich who dropped down to P2.

With 10 minutes remaining in the session, UNI-Virtuosi locked out the front tow with Zhou on provisional pole and Drugovich in second with Lundgaard in third.

20 of the 22 F2 drivers took to the track for the final time in qualifying as they looked to make it count on their final runs.

Not long after that, Shwartzman brought out the red flag as his Prema car lost power and stopped on the start/finish straight and meant everyone had to return back to the pits.

As soon as the green light appeared at the end of the pit lane everyone was out again. Lundgaard temporarily jumped onto pole position, but Zhou stole it away from the Dane by three-thousandths of a second.

What’s Next?

After Guanyu Zhou picked up the first four points of the season for his pole position, he will have to wait until Sunday to start in P1 as we are set for two Sprint Races on Saturday before the Feature Race at the end of the week.

It will be David Beckmann that steps onto pole position for the first race of the F2 season alongside rookie and Red Bull Academy driver Liam Lawson.

This will be a great opportunity with most of the rookies qualifying near the back end of the top 10 and will enable them to experience life at the front of the pack for the first time.

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