Rafael Câmara picked up right where he left off before the summer break with his fifth Formula 2 pole position of the season at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza. The Invicta Racing driver will be joined by his teammate Joshua Dürksen on the front row for the feature race, with Rodin Motorsport’s Alex Dunne 0.146 seconds off pole in third. Feeder Series spoke to the top three about their sessions in the post-qualifying press conference.

By Cliona Sheerin

Today’s result takes Câmara to five poles and eight front-row starts in his rookie year. The Invicta driver credited his team for their role in helping him maximise his Friday performances.

“Being in a very good team as well, it helps a lot,” Câmara told Feeder Series. “Always having a competitive car and always being given the chance to be there fighting for pole positions. All the work we’ve been doing behind [closed] doors, all the preparation we do, the way we prepare and how we always get in on things to make sure we’re on the right foot for quali – we’re doing that very well. 

“It was good to get another pole and we just need to keep going, doing the same job, focusing on ourselves, and hopefully we can fight for more pole positions.”

Câmara did all the hard work for his pole in the first portion of the session, setting the fastest time on the second lap of his first run. And with the field tripping over one another in expected fashion in the latter stages, no one could get closer than 0.057s to the Ferrari junior.

“[The] first run was good,” Câmara continued. “[The] second run maybe was not ideal, but [it] was good that we were able to manage well the first run and still get the pole position.”

The two points he earned for taking pole have pushed him to 20 points behind championship leader Nikola Tsolov and level with Gabriele Minì, with the Brazilian second on countback by having two feature race victories to the Italian’s one.

It was a relatively slow start to the session with more than five minutes elapsing before the drivers took to the circuit behind free practice pacesetter Alex Dunne. Even then, the majority of the field returned to the pits once more after a brief warm-up phase.

On his first flying lap, Dunne then locked up both front tyres on cold brakes and cut through the grass and gravel at the Variante Ascari. Câmara went to the top with a 1:31.900 before León posted a time 0.022s quicker. Câmara’s Invicta teammate Joshua Dürksen then went even faster with a 1:31.701.

Several drivers improved on their second laps, with championship leader Tsolov slotting into fourth followed by the MP Motorsport duo of Oliver Goethe and Minì. Câmara found the most pace, however, going almost four tenths quicker than the lap of his teammate and to the top with a 1:31.326. León remained second with an improved time that saw him sit 0.255s behind the Brazilian. At the third time of asking, Dunne set his banker lap of a 1:31.779 to edge out Tsolov in fourth. 

When the second runs began with six minutes remaining, provisional poleman Câmara was one of the last drivers to exit the pits, but the majority of the field pitted once more before the slipstream game of cat and mouse began in earnest. With two minutes of the session remaining, Mari Boya found himself controlling the pack on the run down to the Curva Alboreto, his Prema crawling along the back straight at a snail’s pace. Roman Bilinski eventually had enough of the imposed speed limit and decided to go it alone, with several others following suit and weaving around their slow-moving competitors. 

Despite the almost-certain loss in tyre temperature caused by the slow speeds on the outlap, there were green sectors aplenty as late improvements led to a reshuffle of the order. Dunne set a purple second sector on his way to a 1:31.472, momentarily good enough for the front row. He was quickly displaced by Dürksen, whose 1:31.383 gave Invicta their second qualifying 1-2 of the year after they locked out the front row in Barcelona.

While Câmara didn’t improve, it was the second run that counted for the rest of the top three, who spoke to Feeder Series about their strategy to getting a good slipstream around the Temple of Speed.

“It’s very important to be behind a very fast guy because like this, you have a constant tow for all the lap and you don’t really lose a lot then on the corners,” Dürksen explained. “Of course if you catch a slower [car], it can be risky. Maybe you have to leave a bigger gap, but then you don’t maximise the tow on the first sector. Maybe it’s okay for the second one, but then you have the risk to be too close on the third sector. It’s all about gap management and being behind the right guy in order to have a good chance.”

“[It’s] pretty simple: get out behind someone good,” Dunne said. “There’s no rocket science to it. Put yourself in the right place on track. Of course, you want to find someone who is roughly the same pace as you. If you’re behind someone who is struggling a bit more with pace, you’re probably going to catch them at the wrong time during the lap. You want to get a tow, but you want to make sure you’re behind someone who can keep it together in front of you as well.”

Behind the top three, León slipped down in the second runs to fourth, with Martinius Stenshorne sandwiched between him and points leader Tsolov in sixth. 

Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak qualified in seventh to extend his streak of qualifying inside the top 10 to five rounds in succession. Ritomo Miyata achieved his best qualifying of the year in eighth, with Goethe demoted to ninth having run inside the top five during the first runs. 

Trident’s John Bennett rounded out the top 10 to put himself on pole position for tomorrow’s race. Minì qualified just outside the reversed grid in 11th, where he will start both races.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency