Van Hoepen delivers for Trident to claim first F2 pole in Canada

Laurens van Hoepen earned his first career pole position in the FIA Formula 2 Championship's debut at Montreal's Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, taking the top spot with his final lap of 1m21.422s for the Trident team. Rafael Câmara rebounded from mid-session contact with the wall to take P2 ahead of Alexander Dunne in third.

Ritomo Miyata was first across the line to set a competitive lap, but his initial effort was quickly beaten as Joshua Duerksen recorded a 1m22.914s to go fastest. Gabriele Minì took over P1 on his first attempt with a 1m22.615s to go 0.2s clear, with Kush Maini also going quicker than Duerksen. Câmara then closed that deficit down to just 0.005s as he filtered through to go P2.

After opting for an extra preparation lap, Nikola Tsolov went to the top of the timing screens but Nico Varrone then bettered that effort, a 1:22.078 the new benchmark time by the Van Amersfoort Racing driver. Câmara delivered a purple first sector and two personal bests to then take P1, 1:22.025 leaving him 0.053s ahead of the Argentinian driver. Van Hoepen delivered an improvement of his own to go third fastest for Trident as the session approached the halfway stage.

Drivers then returned to the pitlane for fresh supersoft tires and headed back out onto circuit for the final 12 minutes of running. As the next set of laps were set to begin, Oliver Goethe tapped the outside wall at Turn 4, causing session-ending suspension damage and bringing out the red flag.

The session resumed and drivers returned to the track with eight minutes to go for their final attempts, but a second red flag followed when Tasanapol Inthraphuvasak hit the wall at Turn 4. He was out of the car and OK, and his ART Grand Prix car was recovered.

Back underway, Noel León recorded the new fastest time only for teammate Tsolov to take P1 back on a 1m21.789s. Stenshorne delivered the lap to usurp the Bulgarian and a 1m21.744s put the Norwegian top of the pile with just over a minute to go. Teammate Dunne then delivered a final improvement to record a 1m21.709s to take provisional pole position.

Championship leader Tsolov improved on his last attempt but couldn’t better Dunne, but Câmara and van Hoepen did, with the latter taking his maiden F2 pole position. Dunne wound up third fastest ahead of Tsolov and Stenshorne in P5. Duerksen finished sixth ahead of John Bennett in P7, León in eighth while Villagómez and Gabriele Minì rounded out the top 10. America's Colton Herta qualified 21st in the 22-car field, 1.435s off the pace.

The Montreal F2 Sprint Race is scheduled to get underway at 2:10pm ET on Saturday afternoon.

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