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Qualifying report

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

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 
 Pietro Fittipaldi Lotus 1'34.808  
 Roy Nissany Rp Motorsport 1'35.345 0.537
 Rene Binder Lotus 1'35.358 0.550
 Matevos Isaakyan SMP Racing by AVF 1'35.392 0.584
 Yu Kanamaru Rp Motorsport 1'35.566 0.758
 Egor Orudzhev SMP Racing by AVF 1'35.744 0.936
 Alfonso Celis Fortec Motorsports 1'35.897 1.089
 Damiano Fioravanti Rp Motorsport 1'36.198 1.390
 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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