Arvid Lindblad stormed to his first Formula 2 pole position Friday in Barcelona by beating fellow rookie Sebastián Montoya by 0.245 seconds, the widest qualifying margin this season. 

By Calla Kra-Caskey

Just three rounds after becoming F2’s youngest winner, Red Bull junior Lindblad became the series’ second-youngest polesitter at 17 years and 295 days old, just 22 days shy of the record Théo Pourchaire set in Monaco in 2021. 

Lindblad may have had a large gap over Montoya, but much as in F3’s earlier qualifying session F2’s qualifying also featured the smallest field spread of the season. In F3, polesitter Rafael Câmara had a gap of 0.216 seconds over second place while the top 26 were covered by one second. In F2, all 22 drivers were covered by 1.716 seconds, with the top 17 covered by a second. 

Part of this, the top three drivers said, was because of the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya’s familiarity to drivers. The track has been a mainstay of the series, and it also hosted three days of pre-season testing for F2 in February.

“We do testing here, so the track is known extremely well by teams and drivers, so that always makes it close and exciting,” Lindblad told Feeder Series in the post-session press conference. 

“It definitely closes the field up for sure, but I think this track in general has always been close,” said Kush Maini, who qualified a season-best third.

Half the field opted to go out immediately for their first qualifying runs. Invicta’s Leonardo Fornaroli led the early group, while Sami Meguetounif and Pepe Martí had their flying laps deleted for track limits violations. 

The second group set their flying laps just before the 30-minute session’s halfway point. Lindblad beat Fornaroli to provisional pole, while Ritomo Miyata slotted into third behind the pair. Joshua Dürksen had his first lap deleted for track limits but set another shortly after, leaving Meguetounif and Martí as the only drivers without representative times after the first runs. 

With eight minutes remaining, drivers emerged to prepare for their final flying laps. With 2:22 remaining, Victor Martins was the first to set a faster time to go fourth, but he fell down the order as further laps came in. He broke his streak of eight top-three qualifying results with a disappointing 15th, just behind ART Grand Prix teammate Miyata in 14th. 

Out front, Montoya briefly snatched provisional pole position with a 1:25.425 before Lindblad set his best lap, a 1:25.180, with 58 seconds left. Monaco sprint race winner Maini’s earlier effort put him third, 0.330s off of Lindblad’s pole time.

Although he missed out on pole, Montoya tied his season-best result of second from Imola, this time without the aid of a red flag that truncated the session early. It marked his third top-five qualifying finish in a row and signalled an improvement from his qualifying struggles in F3 last year.

He noted that returning to the more familiar European tracks has helped his form. He has raced at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya every year since 2022.

“F3 goes to a lot of the tracks F2 goes to, and if the team prepares you well enough, you have the data from last year and you have the sim, it puts you in a good position,” he said. “[Testing] might help a little bit.… The temperatures are so different, the car reacts in such a different manner, that you kind of still need to adapt to it, but it for sure helps slightly.

“And it’s a track everyone knows quite well. I think everyone has been driving here since F4, pretty much, so everyone understands the track. You just need to adapt to the car and the temperature and get on with it.”

All three drivers noted that the hot temperatures meant the tyres fell off more quickly during qualifying, making management more important. Pushing too hard early in the lap could result in having the tyres lose performance by the end, so Maini said he was impressed by the fact that Lindblad’s pole lap featured three purple sectors. 

“It’s just about, like it is in F2, to maximize what it is on a given day and to get the tyres in the right window. If you do that with all the drivers being so close, if you can maximise that window, you’re gonna be quick,” Maini said. 

Roman Staněk and Alex Dunne completed the top five in qualifying, although Dunne will have a three-place grid drop in both races for locking up and colliding with Victor Martins in the pit lane during practice. The collision brings him to eight penalty points for the season so far. He also has a 10-place grid drop for the sprint for causing a collision in the Monaco feature race. 

Richard Verschoor, Jak Crawford and points leader Luke Browning qualified sixth, seventh and eighth respectively, but will each start a place higher during the feature because of Dunne’s penalty. Dürksen and Fornaroli, who qualified ninth and 10th, will form the front row for the sprint. 

Gabriele Minì, Montoya’s Prema teammate, had his fastest lap removed for track limits, dropping him from 17th to 18th. Rafael Villagómez also lost a lap time, though he remained last. 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency