Styria – Formula 2: A Look Back at the Qualifications, Pole Position for Rookie Yuki Tsunoda

If the weather permits, this Styrian Grand Prix, counting for the second round of the Formula 2 championship, will apparently be even more competitive than last weekend! Indeed, the qualifying session that took place this Friday afternoon delivered an extremely close result. No fewer than 19 cars were within one second of each other!

Yuki Tsunoda, Carlin driver, was the fastest on the Austrian circuit with a time of 1:14.803, ahead of two Uni-Virtuosi drivers: Guanyu Zhou and Callum Ilott. Unlike Formula 1, qualifications in Formula 2 are not divided into several rounds. As a result, it’s often necessary to deal with traffic to achieve a good time.

We also witnessed some heated moments during this qualifying session, particularly between Guanyu Zhou and Mick Schumacher, who almost collided in the third turn. The former was on a fast lap while the latter was creating space for a clean run. It’s also worth noting the strong times achieved by the Carlin drivers (Tsunoda 1st and Daruvala 7th), a team not expected to dominate the top positions at the start of this season!

Lucas Ghiotto, unfortunate on track last week, achieved a great qualification by placing his Hitech Grand Prix in 4th place.

On the Prema team side, Mick Schumacher couldn’t do better than a 9th position, while his teammate and rival Robert Shwartzman had achieved a solid 6th time, just 0.175 from pole.

Finally, Giuliano Alesi, who achieved a magnificent comeback in the long race last weekend, could only manage 21st and penultimate place with his BWT HWA Racelab. He closely followed his experienced teammate, the Russian Artem Markelov, who was 20th on the starting grid. But with the difficult weather this Saturday at the Red Bull Ring, doubt remains about the long race going ahead, initially scheduled for 4:40 PM.