Hungary F2: De Vries sets pace in wet qualifying

On a soaking track, Nikita Mazepin spun at the chicane in the early seconds of the session and stalled to bring out a red flag almost immediately.

After that, ART Grand Prix’s de Vries and Virtuosi Racing’s Ghiotto were majestic, clearing the rest of the field by over two seconds on their first runs as they explored the limits of the wet track.

But just after de Vries pitted with 13 minutes to go, the constantly-improving Nicholas Latifi stormed to the top of the time sheets for DAMS, the Williams junior 0.242s going clear of de Vries.

It took until the last five minutes for more improvements, and after emerging from a pitstop de Vries strung together three session-best sectors to move 0.769s clear of Latifi.

Ghiotto emerged from the pits and got within 0.227s, but had to settle for second place.

No one else would come close, as Latifi failed to best his earlier effort and remained third on the grid for Saturday’s feature race.

Mick Schumacher (Prema) came close to his best qualifying performance in F2, pushed down by Ghiotto’s late improvement.

Carlin's Louis Deletraz was another driver to improve late on, leaping ahead of Sauber Junior Team driver and Ferrari junior Callum Ilott, the last driver within a second of pole.

Jack Aitken set a session-best sector on his last run but couldn't nail the tricky final corner and had to settle for seventh with Campos Racing.

Honda junior Nobuharu Matsushita took eighth despite leaping over the chicane curbs on his last effort in the second Carlin entry.

Completing the top 10 were the two standout F2 rookies of the season, Arden’s Anthoine Hubert and Ghiotto’s teammate Guan Yu Zhou.

UPDATE: Both Hubert and his Arden teammate Tatiana Calderon, who had qualified 18th, were subsequently excluded for tyre infringements.

Session results:

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	4	Nyck de Vries	ART Grand Prix	1'49.809
2	8	Luca Ghiotto	UNI-Virtuosi	1'50.036	0.227
3	6	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1'50.578	0.769
4	9	Mick Schumacher	Prema Powerteam	1'50.748	0.939
5	1	Louis Deletraz	Carlin	1'50.853	1.044
6	11	Callum Ilott	Charouz Racing System	1'50.871	1.062
7	15	Jack Aitken	Campos Racing	1'50.962	1.153
8	2	Nobuharu Matsushita	Carlin	1'51.408	1.599
9	19	Anthoine Hubert	Arden International	1'51.513	1.704
10	7	Guanyu Zhou	UNI-Virtuosi	1'51.573	1.764
11	16	Jordan King	MP Motorsport	1'51.717	1.908
12	12	Juan Manuel Correa	Charouz Racing System	1'51.788	1.979
13	5	Sergio Sette Camara	DAMS	1'51.817	2.008
14	20	Giuliano Alesi	Trident	1'52.644	2.835
15	14	Arjun Maini	Campos Racing	1'52.718	2.909
16	21	Ralph Boschung	Trident	1'52.956	3.147
17	10	Sean Gelael	Prema Powerteam	1'52.995	3.186
18	18	Tatiana Calderon	Arden International	1'53.997	4.188
19	17	Mahaveer Raghunathan	MP Motorsport	1'55.217	5.408
20	3	Nikita Mazepin	ART Grand Prix
View full results