Monza F3.5: Fittipaldi dominates drying, red-flagged qualifying
Pietro Fittipaldi topped the first Formula V8 3.5 qualifying session at Monza, which was held under drying conditions and was red-flagged in the very end.
Polesitter Pietro Fittipaldi, Lotus
Dutch Photo Agency
The Lotus driver, who won both races in the Silverstone season opener but then was only sixth and eighth at Spa, took his fourth pole in five qualifying sessions.
The qualifying was run on a wet but drying track, and the field rejoined after the mid-session break on slicks.
However, it started to rain during the dying stages, causing Rene Binder to crash at Parabolica, and points leader Alfonso Celis and Nelson Mason to both go off into the gravel.
Fittipaldi was narrowly quickest after the first half of the session, just a few hundredths ahead of teammate Rene Binder.
The Brazilian then improved by half a second with a time of 1m34.808s with just two minutes to go, and the subsequent red flag saw him complete the qualifying on top.
Binder couldn't improve with his first attempt and was caught out during his second flyer.
He had to settle for third, having narrowly been edged out by RP Motorsport's Roy Nissany, but managed to beat Matevos Isaakyan by a similarly close margin.
Yu Kanamaru brought a second RP car into the top five, as Egor Orudzhev was sixth quickest, almost a second off the pace.
Celis was seventh, as Fortec completed a low-key session with Diego Menchaca only 10th.
Between the Mexican duo, Damiano Fioravanti and Konstantin Tereshchenko were eighth and ninth respectively.
Mason and Giuseppe Cipriani, who didn't return to the track for the second part of the session, rounded out the field.
Qualifying 1 results
Cla | Driver | Entrant | Time | Delay |
1 | Pietro Fittipaldi | Lotus | 1'34.808 | |
2 | Roy Nissany | Rp Motorsport | 1'35.345 | 0.537 |
3 | Rene Binder | Lotus | 1'35.358 | 0.550 |
4 | Matevos Isaakyan | SMP Racing by AVF | 1'35.392 | 0.584 |
5 | Yu Kanamaru | Rp Motorsport | 1'35.566 | 0.758 |
6 | Egor Orudzhev | SMP Racing by AVF | 1'35.744 | 0.936 |
7 | Alfonso Celis | Fortec Motorsports | 1'35.897 | 1.089 |
8 | Damiano Fioravanti | Rp Motorsport | 1'36.198 | 1.390 |
9 | Konstantin Tereschenko | Teo Martin Motorsport | 1'36.216 | 1.408 |
10 | Diego Menchaca | Fortec Motorsports | 1'36.217 | 1.409 |
11 | Nelson Mason | Teo Martin Motorsport | 1'36.654 | 1.846 |
12 | Giuseppe Cipriani | Il Barone Rampante | 1'37.758 | 2.950 |
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