Nurburgring F3: Hughes and Ilott share Sunday poles

Hughes emerged from a late fight with fellow Brits Ilott and Lando Norris to grab the fastest time of the session on the final lap, giving him pole for race two in his Hitech-run car by 0.310 seconds from Ilott as thunder and lightning circled the circuit.

Ilott had experienced a nightmare session up until the final couple of minutes, repeatedly running wide in his Prema Powerteam entry and even taking to the escape road at the Turn 5 hairpin on three successive laps. 

But, with one minute remaining he completed a lap that vaulted him from 19th to pole.

Ilott’s final lap should have been quicker still, but an oversteer moment exiting the final corner cost him time, although this lap gave him pole for race three based on second-fastest times, by 0.162s over Norris.

Carlin driver Norris, third overall, was set to improve on the final lap, and was a quarter of a second up on his first-sector time from his best lap. But unfortunate positioning in traffic meant he had to overtake Max Defourny and was then behind Ameya Vaidyanathan at the final corner.

Even so, that lap – which the team doubted would have leapfrogged him above Hughes’s overall best – was good enough for second on the grid for race three.

Hughes had to make do with third in the line-up for race three, but was delighted with his second pole of the season. 

“I was praying for it to rain in the assembly area,” he said. “All through Q1 and race one it’s been wet but not torrential, and we were always quick at the start and then fade as it got drier, so I was confident that if it stayed wet it’d be mega.

“The car was great whenever I pushed – it was just a case of trying to compromise between giving myself space and keeping the tyre temperature up.”

After his early braking dramas, Ilott remarked: “I just had to make it work in the last two laps – they weren’t amazing laps compared to my lap in Q1, but obviously it wasn’t too bad.”

Tadasuke Makino kept up his strong form this weekend by taking fourth overall, the Hitech-run Honda junior heading Carlin’s Ferdinand Habsburg, while another Hitech runner – Ralf Aron – was on pole during the middle of the session before slipping to sixth ahead of Prema’s Ferrari protege Guan Yu Zhou.

This quartet were reshuffled on second-best times, finishing in the order Aron, Zhou, Habsburg and Makino.

Van Amersfoort Racing teammates Joey Mawson, Defourny and Harrison Newey rounded out the top 10, with Mawson and debutant Defourny doubling up on eighth and ninth spots for race three, and Jehan Daruvala moving up to complete the fifth row.

Current points runner-up Maximilian Gunther had a bad session, looking as though he was suffering similar braking problems to Prema teammate Ilott on his way to 15th and 14th positions.

Motopark's Joel Eriksson was even worse off, ending up 17th and 16th.