Dino Beganovic claimed his second Formula 2 pole position of 2026 as he dominated qualifying around the new Madring circuit. The DAMS driver finished the session more than two tenths ahead of Rodin Motorsport’s Alex Dunne with Rafael Câmara placing third. Feeder Series spoke to the top three in the post-qualifying press conference.

By Cliona Sheerin

Beganovic survived the stoppages around the Madrid street circuit to claim his second pole position of the season after starting first in the opening feature race in Melbourne. Today’s result is just his fifth qualifying top 10 of the season, and after a scoreless round last weekend in Monza, the Swede has bounced back at a track that has caught out many so far this weekend.

“It’s been a while,” Beganovic told Feeder Series in the post-qualifying press conference. “We’re coming from a tough weekend in Monza, which was really tough on me, really tough on the team. But we just dig deep and I always love these kind of challenges. You come to a new track and everything is reset for everyone, for the team, for the drivers and it’s a great challenge.

“In the end we always had to believe in ourselves. We still have the race on Sunday and Baku and then we have to see what happens. There’s plenty of stuff to improve and to be on top of but it’s been a rollercoaster to get here again.”

After a practice session earlier in the day disrupted by a fiery crash for Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak that forced him to sit out qualifying, the entire field took to the track as the session went green, aiming to get a time on the board before any more incidents transpired. 

But those plans were scuppered as the drivers started their first flying laps, with two yellow flags being flown almost simultaneously. The first was caused by Sebastián Montoya, who sustained right-rear suspension damage after making contact with the wall at Turn 11. Kush Maini then had a separate incident of his own just seconds later, losing the rear on the exit of Turn 15, spinning into the wall on the right-hand side before rolling back across the track and eventually coming to a halt on the entry to Turn 17. Montoya limped back to the pits, while Maini’s session was over before it truly began in earnest and the red flag was brought out to recover his stricken ART.  

The session resumed with just under 24 minutes remaining, with Beganovic setting the timing pages alight with purple sectors in both the first and second sectors. However, his time was only good enough for fifth after he lost time and almost his car in the final sector with a snap of oversteer exiting Turn 18.

Nikola Tsolov set the pace after the first flying laps, going fastest in the third sector on his way to a 1:46.328. His lead over second-placed Dunne was only two thousandths of a second, however, with Roman Bilinski and Noel León both within two tenths of his timesheet-topping effort. Câmara slotted into sixth, crossing the line in the nick of time before the second red flag of the session. On this occasion, it was for a crash for Nico Varrone, whose Van Amersfoort vehicle clattered into the wall around the outside of Turn 20. 

That red flag allowed the Prema mechanics to continue working on the damaged car of Montoya without penalty. The Colombian returned to the track with the rest of the field once qualifying got back underway, but he soon lost drive and had to bring his car back to the pits for the final time.

Track evolution led to several improvements across the board on the second flying laps, with Dunne going almost a second quicker than Tsolov’s benchmark. Beganovic then pushed the envelope even further, setting a 1:45.182 with 12:14 remaining to go two tenths quicker than the Rodin driver, who was sandwiched by DAMS cars as Bilinski went third. 

On his next attempt, set with 7:54 remaining, Beganovic found even more time, stringing together two more fastest sectors in the earlier part of the lap to go eight tenths clear at the top of the timings. 

John Bennett then usurped that purple first sector, but he found the wall before he could bring his lap to completion. After losing his Trident in the mid-corner of Turn 11, Bennett hit the outside wall, causing terminal damage to the rear of his car. To add insult to injury, he was also deemed the sole cause of the third red flag of the session, consequently losing his fastest time, which had placed him fifth in the session. 

Qualifying restarted for the final time with just over five minutes to go, the timing screen lighting up like a Christmas tree with green sectors aplenty. But Beganovic went a step further, going purple once again through sectors one and two to set a new fastest time of a 1:44.331. Dunne was second, 0.230s behind, with Câmara improving to third on the final runs having sat as far down as 14th before the final restart.

Colton Herta looked set to move up the order at the end of the session before a crash at the exit of Turn 19 brought his day, and the session as a whole, to an end. 

With five red flags across practice and qualifying, the teams and drivers will have to contend with less data than usual around a circuit that is already unfamiliar across the board. Tomorrow’s sprint race will help compensate for that missing data, albeit only to a certain degree, as the top three told Feeder Series.

“We don’t have a lot of info about the hard tyre after FP,” Beganovic said. “We drove the soft in qualifying, so tomorrow will be important to understand what the tyre is doing, what the car is doing and set it up for Sunday’s race. We lack a lot of data, but in the end I have to trust the work coming into the weekend and don’t invent the wheel from there.”

“FP would have been a lot more representative for the feature race because on Sunday it’s going to be a lot colder. What you learn from qualifying with it being an extra 20, 25 degrees of track temp isn’t going to be super representative for the feature race on Sunday,” Dunne said. “Tomorrow is a good opportunity to learn but that’s also going to be hotter than what we have on Sunday, so it’s going to be a tricky one.”

“In FP, [there] was not many laps,” Câmara added. “And quali again you’re already thinking a bit more because you don’t have enough data or enough read of what you need to do for quali. And then quali was again another session that was quite tricky with a lot of red flags and not getting some clean runs during the warm-up procedure and just pushing. So on that side it’s difficult to know exactly how [the car] was behaving. But you can know a bit for the races with the tyres, what to expect a bit.

“Tomorrow will be very important to do a full race to know what to do on Sunday and be ready for where you can take the big points.”

Behind the top three came Martinius Stenshorne in fourth and championship leader Tsolov in fifth. Beganovic’s DAMS teammate Bilinski finished the session sixth, having run in the top three for a period of time before the final red flag. Laurens van Hoepen was seventh ahead of Noel León in eighth, with Ritomo Miyata set to start on the front row of tomorrow’s sprint race. He will be joined by Emerson Fittipaldi Jr, his 10th-place finish a career-best for the AIX driver.

Gabriele Minì, currently third in the championship, qualified outside the top 10 for the second successive weekend and will start 14th for the third and fourth times in a row this weekend.

Header photo credit: Dutch Photo Agency