Victor Martins continued his strong qualifying form by securing pole position for the Formula 2 Feature Race at Silverstone — his sixth front-row start of the season.
Despite his consistency on Saturdays, the ART driver is still chasing his first victory of the campaign.
Championship contender Alex Dunne finished the session in second place with his title rival Jak Crawford completing the top three.
Martins kicked off the weekend strongly by topping the earlier Free Practice session with a lap time of 1:41.699s.
He edged out Hitech’s Luke Browning, who finished second, while the DAMS Lucas Oil driver of Crawford secured third place.
Championship leader Richard Verschoor heads into the weekend with a comfortable lead after his victory in Austria.
The Dutchman is 24 points clear of Rodin Motorsport’s Dunne, who was disqualified from second place in the last Feature Race at the Red Bull Ring.
The entry list remained unchanged ahead of the eighth round of the 2025 season.
Martins builds on practice pace with early qualifying lead
Verschoor initially set the early pace after the warm-up laps, but Martins soon claimed provisional pole with a 1:40.710s.
Several drivers who surged towards the front lost their first flying lap times due to track limits.
Following the wave of deleted times, Crawford secured third place, with Sebastian Montoya joining him on the second row in the first part of qualifying.
Dunne had a difficult start to the session, only managing 12th fastest, just ahead of fan favourite Arvid Lindblad.
Qualifying was briefly halted by a red flag caused by Amaury Cordeel, who spun out at the final corner, stalling his Rodin and unable to restart.
Max Esterson, Sami Meguetounif, Kush Maini, Gabriele Mini and Ritomo Miyata all failed to set a lap time before the stoppage.
With the session restarting, Dunne set about to improve on his position to join the fight for pole.
The McLaren development driver shot up the order to third, just 0.098s shy of the Frenchman’s fastest lap time.
Miyata’s session was cut short by a technical issue that forced the ART driver to withdraw from qualifying.
The grid resumed their warm-up laps after the red flag, with Crawford the first to light up the timing screens with seven minutes to go.
Dunne and Martins scrap for pole
The American went quickest in the first two sectors and delivered a superb lap to post a 1:39.971s.
Montoya followed, slotting into second, 0.167s adrift, while Verschoor couldn’t improve and remained third.
Martins then raised the bar again, improving on his earlier time to reclaim provisional pole with a 1:39.731s.
Just moments earlier, Roman Stanek had unexpectedly jumped to third, but Dunne soon demoted him, missing out on the fastest time by just 0.065s — remarkably, on used tyres.
AIX Racing’s Joshua Durksen climbed into the top 10, securing sixth place as others improved around him.
Mini languished down the order for Prema in 16th after another lap time was deleted for track limits.
Leonardo Fornaroli snatched provisional reverse-grid pole for Invicta Racing, edging into the top 10 and demoting Lindblad to 11th after the Brit had briefly climbed into the key position.
This set up what could be a difficult weekend for the Red Bull junior, who is unbeaten at Silverstone in his Formula 3 days.
This time, though, the spotlight belonged to Martins, who converted his practice pace into pole position, with Dunne and Crawford rounding out the top three.
Stanek finished the session in fourth place, Montoya fifth, Durksen sixth, Verschoor seventh after initially contesting for a front row start.
Dino Beganovic claimed eighth, Maini ninth and Fornaroli 10th to take pole for Saturday’s Sprint Race.
READ MORE – Richard Verschoor cruises to Austria Feature win to take F2 title lead
Discussion about this post