Formula 2 championship leader Leonardo Fornaroli qualified second for the penultimate round of 2025 in Qatar but inherited pole position for the feature race after original pacesetter Oliver Goethe earned a penalty for impeding. Feeder Series spoke to the top three qualifiers about what the result meant for their seasons. 

By Calla Kra-Caskey

Although Goethe pipped championship leader Leonardo Fornaroli to the fastest time in Friday’s qualifying session by 0.040s, the Invicta Racing driver ultimately had the upper hand come the end of the day.

On his cooldown lap just after setting his session-best 1:36.115, Goethe was found to have impeded Martinius Stenshorne, competing in his first race for his 2026 team Rodin Motorsport, while the Norwegian was on a flying lap. The MP Motorsport driver received a three-place grid penalty for both the sprint and the feature races, costing him not only his pole position but also the two points that would have come with it.

It’s a crucial two-point swing for Fornaroli, who looked dominant to start the weekend even before the qualifying session played out. The Italian driver led practice with a tenth of a second in hand over Dino Beganovic in second and six tenths over Alex Dunne, the last driver mathematically eligible for the title, in third. 

Goethe, who was seventh in practice, improved his pace into qualifying, an area in which he said he had struggled throughout the season.

“At the start of the season, let’s say the first half of the season, I would say qualifying was actually the weaker point, so it feels actually extra nice to be on top,” Goethe told Feeder Series in the post-qualifying press conference. 

The German driver has had a difficult season so far. He’s currently 17th in the standings with 23 points, 128 behind teammate Richard Verschoor in fourth. 

He’s taken a best result of fourth at the Bahrain and Belgium sprints – matching his impressive feature race result in Qatar last year – but for the most part, points have been hard to come by. Goethe hoped the result would mark a turnaround in form. 

“I’ve been working really hard to finally deliver this, on the simulator, working with the team, working on myself, training,” he said. “I would say just slowly but surely it’s been coming this season, and now I’ve been able to deliver that good lap. I feel like we can use this momentum to continue to be strong.” 

Goethe wasn’t the only driver using the Qatar qualifying session to bounce back from a difficult period. In third place was Victor Martins, who started the season with an impressive five consecutive top-three qualifying finishes – and seven such results in the first eight rounds – but had not qualified in the top 10 since the summer break until today. 

“In terms of pure results you always want to be on pole, to be up there, but in terms of the development and the evolution throughout the day, I think I’m super proud,” the ART Grand Prix driver said. 

Martins was the first driver to get a lap on the board with a 1:38.518, but he was quickly surpassed by the Prema Racing pair. 

After everyone bar the Tridents had completed their first lap, Fornaroli led the way with a 1:37.850, 0.113s ahead of championship challenger Jak Crawford and 0.127s in front of Invicta Racing teammate Roman Staněk. 

Martins’ second lap was briefly quick enough for provisional pole, but the MP pair of Goethe and Verschoor topped him on their own second attempts just after 10 minutes had elapsed. 

Fornaroli’s second push lap of 1:36.996 was once again good enough to top the timesheets, although Staněk jumped Crawford for second behind him. Goethe then took a third flying lap on the first run to jump into second, just 0.075s behind Fornaroli. 

Luke Browning opened the second run with a 1:37.263, good enough for fourth even though he dipped a wheel in the gravel at Turn 14. His teammate Dino Beganovic followed and improved to provisional pole with a 1:36.826 with just over six minutes remaining.

Fornaroli then improved to a 1:36.307 a minute later, again taking provisional pole. He looked to be in prime position to keep it, but with just over a minute remaining in the session, Goethe snagged the top spot with a 1:36.115, 0.040s ahead of Fornaroli’s best effort and 0.170s ahead of Martins in third. 

After the session, Fornaroli’s car stopped on track. He was unable to make it back to the pits. 

“[The result is] a bit disappointing because we were P1 basically all the session, but congratulations to Ollie because he did an amazing lap,” Fornaroli said in the post-session press conference before Goethe was penalised. “Still an amazing day for me, and now we move on.”

For Martins, just to be in the fight for pole was a welcome turn of events. 

“Honestly, after the first set, I was not feeling that the fight for pole or the fight for a top three was in my hands, and I wanted actually to maximise what I had in the car,” he said. 

“In the end, the performance has always been there in the quali. It’s just now a matter of putting everything together in the race, because for sure this year has been tough.”

While Martins has only translated his strong qualifying into a podium twice this season, he said he was confident that his ART machine’s race pace would be stronger than it had been earlier in the season. 

“From mid-season, we started to really improve our package for the races. Definitely the results didn’t show that, but I know what happened,” he said. “Lately we’ve put a lot of focus on the car performance in the race. I think we can see some good things, some positives, and it’s time to show it on track.”

Staněk and Dunne qualified fourth and fifth, with the Czech driver due to line up third on Sunday. Prema’s Sebastián Montoya set a time good enough for sixth, while Nikola Tsolov set an impressive seventh-fastest lap on his F2 qualifying debut. Villagómez took his second consecutive top-10 qualifying result with eighth. 

After having several laps deleted for track limits, Joshua Dürksen set a time good enough for ninth. He will start on the front row alongside Verschoor in tomorrow’s sprint. 

Meanwhile, it was a bad session for championship contenders Crawford and Browning, who will start from 15th and 18th respectively in both races this weekend. Arvid Lindblad qualified 10 places behind his debuting Campos teammate in 17th and received a reprimand after the session for driving unnecessarily slowly at pit exit before his second run. 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency