Championship leader Piastri clinches his fourth consecutive pole position ahead of F2’s Feature Race at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix

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Oscar Piastri set a spectacular 1:40.878 in the dying embers of qualifying to secure his fourth consecutive pole position.

The Aussie beat his Prema teammate Robert Shwartzman and ART’s Theo Pourchaire to claim the top spot in a very interesting session at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit.

Piastri’s title nemesis, Guanyu Zhou, did set some impressive lap times early on but the Chinese driver could qualify sixth for Sunday’s Feature Race.

As It Happened

The first driver to take to the Jeddah Corniche Circuit in qualifying was DAMS’ Roy Nissany followed by the Hitech duo of Liam Lawson and Juri Vips.

The session’s first competitive time was set by Shwartzman who set an impressive 1.41.747 with 22 minutes left on the clock.

Piastri was next over the line with the Aussie’s first flying lap moving him up to into second, six-hundredths behind his Prema teammate.

Pourchaire was able to knock Shwartzman off his perch as his lap time of a 1:41.364 put him on pole position by three tenths. However, the Russian went on to reclaim the top spot by just under three-hundredths moments later.

At the halfway point of qualifying, championship hopeful Zhou was over seven-tenths away from pole position as he failed to set any quick lap times in the first part of the session.

ART duo Pourchaire and Christian Lundgaard lit up the timing screens with impressive sector one times but their pace faded away in sectors two and three as they joined the rest of the field in the pits.

With seven minutes to go, Zhou led everyone out for their final and most important flying laps of qualifying under the lights at Jeddah.

The Chinese driver moved up to third with three minutes with a 1:41.475 as free practice pace-setter Ralph Boschung moved up to fourth moments later.

Zhou managed to set a purple sector one on his final flying lap but Piastri snatched the best sector time away from the UNI-Virtuosi driver on his way to pole position.

Despite this, Zhou moved up to second with a minute to go as Pourchaire pipped Shwartzman to pole before Piastri took that accolade away from the Frenchman.

Shwartzman had a small snap of oversteer out of the 27th and final corner which hindered his run to the line but the Russian was still able to improve as he moved up to second.

In the end, it was Piastri who clinched his fourth pole position in a row adding four points to his championship tally.

Shwartzman, Pourchaire, Lundgaard, Drugovich, Zhou, Boschung, Vips, Marcus Armstrong and Lawson rounded out the top 10 in qualifying.

Quotes from the top three

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After the session, pole-sitter Piastri told Prost International how important a good qualifying is in a competitive series like Formula 2.

“Qualifying at the front is always important, no matter the championship. I think last year it wasn’t the be all and end all but I’m sure my life would’ve been a bit easier if I qualified well last year.

“In race one it doesn’t matter as much, but in the feature race where you hope to score most of the points, it just makes life much easier and we’re obviously not here by chance, we’re quick. I guess most of the time if you’ve not qualified at the front, it’s because you’re not quick enough, but it can be frustrating qualifying at the back if you have the pace, but you just made a mistake.”

With qualifying taking place under the floodlights, Pourchaire and Shwartzman discussed the differences between daytime and night-time running.

Pourchaire said:

“There was a bit more rubber and the track temperature was a bit better and a bit fresher and we also had the super soft tyres. So for me it was natural, in practice we were just learning the track and getting used to the car and learning F2 again after 10 weeks. It was natural, but you have to push for four laps, we only had four laps, so you have to go very fast very quickly.”

Second-placed Shwartzman added:

“We had a few runs last year, in Bahrain race two and qualifying was also at night-time. I really like night in general and driving at night is very cool. First of all, as Theo said, the track is a bit cooler so we have more grip, and it’s something different, it feels unique because it’s not often you can train or drive at night.”

What’s Next?

Sprint Race one will see Liam Lawson start from pole position alongside Marcus Armstrong on the front row with championship contenders Zhou and Piastri starting fifth and 10th respectively.

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