Sette Camara grabs pole in red flag stalled qualifying

Sergio Sette Camara has secured pole position for the French Formula 2 round following an eventful qualifying stalled by red flag periods.

The qualifying session was initially held up before it had really started when Giuliano Alesi ran into the rear of Louis Deletraz on the opening out-lap. The incident saw Alesi’s participation in qualifying instantly ended, while Deletraz saw quick work from his Carlin team to fix his rear wing.

Further drama followed as Nikita Mazepin’s engine let go in his ART Grand Prix on his return to the pits during the first red flag which ended his qualifying.

Sette Camara initially headed up the early running of qualifying for provisional pole but with the pace heating up in the final five minutes the Brazilian driver duly stepped up his pace for DAMS with a 1m 43.024s to take pole position.

It was double disaster for Trident when Ralph Boschung stopped on track with just under three minutes to go with a suspected engine issue which triggered a second red-flag stoppage.

At the restart only a handful of drivers improved their times to see Sette Camara retain pole, despite spinning on his final lap, with Guanyu Zhou taking second place in the UNI-Virtuosi Racing.

Jack Aitken heads up row two in the Campos Racing ahead of Monaco feature race-winner Nyck de Vries for ART Grand Prix.

Callum Ilott looked a strong contender for pole position but faded late on in fifth place for Charouz but qualified directly ahead of Formula 2 championship leader Nicholas Latifi in the second DAMS.

Honda protégé Nobuharu Matsushita grabbed seventh place for Carlin ahead of Mick Schumacher in the Prema as Dorian Boccolacci (Campos) and Sean Gelael (Prema) rounded out the top 10.