de Vries bags Spa pole as Latifi gets caught out by red flag

Full F2 qualifying results at Spa-Francorchamps

Nyck de Vries has secured his fourth pole position of the season to strengthen his Formula 2 title charge as his main rival Nicholas Latifi missed out on his final qualifying lap due to a red flag triggered by Sean Gelael’s crash.

With de Vries holding provisional pole following the opening fast laps, he opted to head out early in the closing minutes of qualifying which proved vital to allow him to produce his best effort of 1m 58.304s.

Main rival Latifi looked set to challenge for the top qualifying places on his last lap but saw it wrecked by a red flag when Gelael crashed out after running wide and losing grip in his Prema Racing car.

That meant Latifi failed to improve, along with Luca Ghiotto and Guanyu Zhou, leaving the trio down the order and allowing de Vries to ease to pole position for the feature race as he also extends his championship lead to 34 points over Latifi.

Sergio Sette Camara slotted into second place for DAMS having edged out Campos Racing’s Jack Aitken.

The British driver is joined by Nobuharu Matsushita in the Carlin on the second row ahead his teammate of Louis Deletraz and Mick Schumacher who claimed his maiden F2 win last time out in the Hungary sprint race.

Nikita Mazepin heads up row four for ART Grand Prix in front of Jordan King who profited in the late red flag shake-up with Zhou relegated to ninth place on the grid for UNI-Virtuosi.

Zhou’s teammate Ghiotto was pushed back to 10^th place ahead of Latifi for DAMS with Giuliano Alesi rounding out the top 12 for Trident.

Callum Ilott will start from last place after suffering an early throttle issue in his Sauber Junior Team by Charouz car which denied him the chance to set a lap time in qualifying.