Barcelona F2: Ilott stretches points lead with pole

llott was second-fastest in the opening runs of the 45-minute session, falling just 0.025s shy of the early benchmark set by Prema's Robert Shwartzman.

The British driver was shuffled down to third by UNI-Virtuosi teammate Guanyu Zhou, who took advantage of an empty track after the opening runs to go second-fastest with a time just 0.014s shy of Shwartzman.

Ilott decided to begin his second run early, and managed to pull a huge gap on the rest of the field with a lap of 1m28.381s to go nearly half a second clear.

Shwartzman couldn't respond on his own second run and fell 0.183s short of a maiden pole, albeit securing his first F2 front-row start.

Zhou looked as if he would threaten his teammate's provisional pole as he again had the track almost to himself for his final flyer, going fastest of all in the first sector, but the Renault junior lost ground later in the lap and came up 0.220s shy of Ilott in third.

Joining Zhou on the second row for Saturday's opening race will be MP Motorsport driver Felipe Drugovich, while Mick Schumacher (Prema) and Yuki Tsunoda (Carlin) will make up row three.

Jack Aitken was seventh for Campos, ahead of practice pacesetter Dan Ticktum (DAMS), Nikita Mazepin (Hitech) and Louis Deletraz (Charouz).

ART Grand Prix's difficult weekend continued with Christian Lundgaard and Marcus Armstong qualifying down in 14th and 19th respectively.

It means Lundgaard, who goes into the Barcelona weekend second in the standings, now faces a deficit of 23 points to Ilott.

Session results:

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	4	Callum Ilott	UNI-Virtuosi	1'28.381
2	21	Robert Shwartzman	Prema Powerteam	1'28.564	0.183
3	3	Guanyu Zhou	UNI-Virtuosi	1'28.601	0.220
4	15	Felipe Drugovich	MP Motorsport	1'28.767	0.386
5	20	Mick Schumacher	Prema Powerteam	1'28.889	0.508
6	7	Yuki Tsunoda	Carlin	1'28.903	0.522
7	9	Jack Aitken	Campos Racing	1'28.979	0.598
8	2	Dan Ticktum	DAMS	1'28.986	0.605
9	24	Nikita Mazepin	HitechGP	1'29.033	0.652
10	11	Louis Deletraz	Charouz Racing System	1'29.199	0.818
11	16	Artem Markelov	HWA AG	1'29.297	0.916
12	8	Jehan Daruvala	Carlin	1'29.308	0.927
13	1	Sean Gelael	DAMS	1'29.316	0.935
14	6	Christian Lundgaard	ART Grand Prix	1'29.333	0.952
15	22	Roy Nissany	Trident	1'29.469	1.088
16	23	Marino Sato	Trident	1'29.493	1.112
17	12	Pedro Piquet	Charouz Racing System	1'29.524	1.143
18	14	Nobuharu Matsushita	MP Motorsport	1'29.641	1.260
19	5	Marcus Armstrong	ART Grand Prix	1'29.686	1.305
20	25	Luca Ghiotto	HitechGP	1'29.690	1.309
21	17	Giuliano Alesi	HWA AG	1'29.748	1.367
22	10	Guilherme Samaia	Campos Racing	1'30.093	1.712
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