Laurens van Hoepen took his first career Formula 2 pole position in what was a messy qualifying session in Montréal on Friday afternoon. The Trident driver qualified 0.267 seconds ahead of Invicta Racing’s Rafael Câmara with Rodin’s Alex Dunne two hundredths of a second further behind. 

By Cliona Sheerin

Van Hoepen’s inaugural pole is also Trident’s first since Richard Verschoor was fastest on Friday in Baku in 2024. It may be a good omen for Van Hoepen that fellow Dutchman Verschoor went on to win that Sunday’s feature race, a feat the 20-year-old will be hoping to replicate later this weekend. 

“I had a good feeling inside the car the whole session,” Van Hoepen told Feeder Series in the post-qualifying press conference. “From lap one, we were up there, and I knew straight away if I made a mistake where to improve and how to fix it. That just made the session a lot easier.

“It was just a bit tricky with that penultimate lap where I was falling down to P10. A lot of pressure came on that last lap to do a good job. We managed it well, and as soon as I saw I was going quicker on my dash, I knew, ‘Oh, this is going to be a good lap’, and I just had to finish it, basically.”

Van Hoepen was third after the first runs, just 0.116s behind session leader Câmara’s time of 1:22.025. They were split by Nico Varrone, who sat just 0.053s back. Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak was in fourth followed by championship leader Nikola Tsolov. All in all, the top 19 cars were covered by less than one second at the halfway point of the 30-minute session.

The second portion of qualifying was interrupted by two red flags as Turn 4 caught out numerous drivers. First it was Oliver Goethe who clipped the wall, damaging his right-rear suspension and forcing both him and the session to come to a halt with 8:21 to go. Almost as soon as the drivers were back on track, however, they were forced back into the pits, this time after Inthraphuvasak lost control of his ART Grand Prix car heading into the same corner and slammed the barrier. 

The second red flag did, however, benefit Câmara, who had made contact with the wall at Turn 4. The stoppage allowed his Invicta team to repair the right-rear suspension damage the Brazilian suffered without costing him track time. 

When the drivers returned to the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve with 5:15 on the clock for the third and final time to complete their second runs, it was Martinius Stenshorne who came out with provisional pole after the first laps with 1:37 remaining. Dunne then went first with a 1:21.709 on his only flying lap after the stoppages, demoting his teammate to make it a Rodin Motorsport 1-2 with 12 seconds remaining. Tsolov then narrowly grabbed second after the chequered flag fell, while Joshua Dürksen could only manage fourth position.

Hot on their heels, however, was Van Hoepen, and with some assistance from a tow from the Invicta in front, he shot to the top of the timings with a 1:21.422. Câmara followed him into second with a 1:21.689, pipping Dunne.

“We knew the tow was going to be powerful here, so it was definitely something we took into account,” Van Hoepen said. “I think in my [pole] lap, I definitely had a bit of tow, which for sure helped. It came together quite nicely and it was the plan also to have a bit of a tow, so we executed it well and it just worked out.”

After an impressive start to a first full F2 campaign that has included two podiums, Van Hoepen now has a maiden pole to his name also. At fourth in the championship and just nine points off the lead, he now will be looking ahead to getting that first victory that he came within a few corners of taking last time out in the Miami sprint. 

Van Hoepen will not, however, be lining up ahead of Câmara and Dunne in Sunday’s race. The two drivers were penalised post-session for separate impeding infringements and will drop three grid positions for both races. 

In the end, championship leader Tsolov took fourth place, which will put him on the front row for Sunday’s race. Stenshorne found himself fifth in qualifying after that timesheet-topping first lap, while Dürksen will join him on row two on Sunday by finishing sixth. Van Hoepen’s teammate John Bennett qualified seventh to make it Trident’s best combined qualifying result since Monaco in 2024 almost exactly two years ago.

Noel León finished eighth, Rafael Villagómez ended up ninth and Gabriele Minì got into the top 10 with an advantage of just three hundredths of a second over Emerson Fittipaldi Jr. The man who sits second in the championship standings will be on pole for the sprint race the next time the cars hit the track, giving him a strong opportunity to take back-to-back wins after his Miami feature race triumph. 

Hitech had a session to forget with Ritomo Miyata and Colton Herta only managing 17th and 21st respectively. Prema fared even worse, with Sebastián Montoya languishing down in 20th and teammate Mari Boya rounding out the grid in 22nd. 

The top 17 drivers were separated by less than a second, while the total 22-car field spread was 1.641s. 

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency