Monza F2: Russell bags crucial pole

With tyres only good enough for one flying lap, the first, the first flier out of the pits with eight minutes to go was key to the outcome.

After what he described as his “toughest weekend of the year” in Spa, Russell bounced back perfectly from set-up issues to secure pole with a 1m31.546s.

Even better for Russell, Norris’s qualifying struggles continued and he could only manage seventh, putting five cars between him and Russell for tomorrow’s race. 

Norris’s Carlin teammate Sergio Sette Camara was fastest early on, having not been outside of the top five in qualifying since Paul Ricard in May - but the Brazilian ultimately couldn’t usurp ART Grand Prix’s Russell at the death.

DAMS ace Alex Albon – who remains in the thick of the title fight – qualified third off the back of a strong weekend in Spa.

Albon will head Artem Markelov and Spa sprint winner Nicholas Latifi off the line for Saturday's race. 

Charouz Racing System driver Antonio Fuoco – a Ferrari Academy driver and last year’s feature race winner at Monza – was the highest-placed Italian driver in sixth ahead of Norris, while Arjun Maini, Luca Ghiotto and Louis Deletraz rounded out the top 10. 

The winner of the last two feature races, Nyck de Vries, had a nightmare session.

A throttle sensor broke in practice, meaning he only got three laps of running, and he could only improve to 11th on his final flying lap in qualifying in his Prema Racing-run car. 

MP's Dorian Boccolacci suffered with gearbox problems and set no representative laptime.

Session results:

Pos.	#	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	8	George Russell	ART Grand Prix	1'31.546
2	18	Sergio Sette Camara	Carlin	1'31.600	0.054
3	5	Alexander Albon	DAMS	1'31.889	0.343
4	1	Artem Markelov	RUSSIAN TIME	1'31.922	0.376
5	6	Nicholas Latifi	DAMS	1'32.021	0.475
6	21	Antonio Fuoco		1'32.159	0.613
7	19	Lando Norris	Carlin	1'32.191	0.645
8	16	Arjun Maini	Trident	1'32.248	0.702
9	14	Luca Ghiotto	Campos Racing	1'32.346	0.800
10	20	Louis Deletraz		1'32.407	0.861
11	4	Nyck de Vries	Prema Powerteam	1'32.566	1.020
12	7	Jack Aitken	ART Grand Prix	1'32.681	1.135
13	12	Nirei Fukuzumi	Arden International	1'32.735	1.189
14	2	Tadasuke Makino	RUSSIAN TIME	1'32.750	1.204
15	15	Roy Nissany	Campos Racing	1'32.801	1.255
16	17	Alessio Lorandi	Trident	1'32.803	1.257
17	3	Sean Gelael	Prema Powerteam	1'32.913	1.367
18	10	Ralph Boschung	MP Motorsport	1'32.965	1.419
19	11	Maximilian Gunther	Arden International	1'33.496	1.950
20	9	Dorian Boccolacci	MP Motorsport	1'48.586	17.040