Hitech’s Luke Browning took his first Formula 2 pole position Friday at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza in commanding fashion, leading DAMS driver Kush Maini by 0.318 seconds after second-fastest runner Richard Verschoor’s late-session crash halted qualifying early and cost him his best lap.

By Michael McClure and Calla Kra-Caskey

Browning’s pole, the first of his F2 career, came amidst a start-stop session that featured three red flags, meaning he set his best time with more than 12 minutes to go in the session. 

“It was quite funny, really. In Jeddah I was on pole [before a late red flag], and it got resumed with two minutes to go and I got done by Jak [Crawford]. I was absolutely gutted,” Browning said in the post-session press conference. “Then the following weeks, my teammate [Dino Beganovic] got on pole with like seven minutes and it got cancelled.”

“Here it was like 12 minutes to go and we went back out again and we had another red flag. It’s like it all came back in a circle. It’s nice to finally be on pole.”

The session began at 15:58 after a three-minute delay to the start time, but drivers did not venture out of their cars until four and a half minutes into the session.

Within two minutes, all drivers had emerged from pit lane, but many returned shortly after and drove through the pit lane instead of on the front straight. Drivers finally set their flying laps after that, with Alex Dunne the first driver to put a competitive lap on the board. His 1:33.554 was quickly beaten by such drivers as Verschoor, Oliver Goethe and Maini, whose 1:32.735 was the best time as the first runs began to wind down. Dunne fell to 15th.

Drivers didn’t have time to consider a second run, however. Gabriele Minì’s Prema began emitting flames entering the Roggia chicane, and he ground to a halt between the two Lesmos a few corners later. The session was red flagged with 17:34 remaining, and the other 21 drivers pitted.

Only 20 made it in. Cian Shields, too, had mechanical trouble and stopped on the entrance to pit lane. 

The session restarted at 16:17 with a flurry of activity. Within a few minutes, Browning had gone even faster to lead the way on a 1:32.390, 0.315s faster than Verschoor’s and 0.318 faster than Maini’s. That time soon proved decisive when Leonardo Fornaroli’s car ground to a halt entering Parabolica, bringing out a yellow flag and then the second red flag of the session with 12:08 to go. Fornaroli was ninth at the time of the red flag on a 1:32.993.

The earlier delays and the length of the red-flag periods forced the session to be reduced in length by five minutes. That left drivers with just over seven minutes to try to usurp Browning.

Drivers began their fastest laps with a few minutes remaining, but they never completed them. Verschoor, the first in line, lost control of his car exiting Lesmo 1 and clattered into the barrier on the inside of the track.

That incident brought out the red flag, abruptly ending the session with two and a half minutes remaining. With the deletion of Verschoor’s fastest lap time, Browning and Maini ended up in the top two spots. Roman Staněk completed the top three.

The session was a rather anticlimactic one, and all three drivers agreed there was more pace to unlock. 

“We’re quite lucky to race here both in Formula 3 and Formula 2. We drive it quite a lot, so … we know roughly where the limit is,” Browning said. “Often you find that the first push is quite close to what the maximum is. I don’t think we quite reached that today. I think many people could have improved – to be honest, so could I. I’m glad that it finished when it did because I’m on pole, but equally, it would have been nice for it to run its full course.”

With that said, there’s not much that can be done differently in a session like this. 

“If I could go back in time I’d put 10 kilos of fuel but it doesn’t work like that, unfortunately,” Maini joked to Feeder Series. “It’s important to be there every lap on a track like this, and I think that’s what we did this weekend.”

“It’s quite hard to predict what Monza’s gonna be. You never know, especially with a track where you need a good tow to put a good lap together,” Staněk said.

“You try to do the best as it goes. If there are red flags, you always try to extract the best. Hou can never plan things like this.”

And despite the fact that he likely could’ve improved upon his pole position lap later in the session, Browning was satisfied with his afternoon’s work.

“I’d do the same [again],” he said with a laugh.

Goethe, Dunne and Arvid Lindblad followed behind, all within half a second of Browning’s pole time. Joshua Dürksen’s time was good enough for seventh, while Fornaroli kept his time that put him eighth despite causing a red flag. 

Sami Meguetounif and Dino Beganovic qualified ninth and 10th and will form the front row for tomorrow’s sprint race. Jak Crawford, second in the championship, just missed out on the reversed grid and will start both races from 11th. Verschoor was shuffled back to 14th.

Neither Sebastián Montoya nor Max Esterson was able to set a representative lap during the session and have been given permission to start from the back of the grid.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency