Hungaroring F3: Ilott and Eriksson take races two and three poles
Callum Ilott aced the second qualifying session of the Formula 3 European Championship round at the Hungaroring and will share pole for Sunday's two races with pre-weekend series leader Joel Eriksson
Ilott set an unbeatable time on his first real hot lap after everyone had filed into the pits towards the halfway mark of the session to take a second set of tyres.
No one looked likely to dislodge the Prema Powerteam Dallara-Mercedes, and it was BMW junior Eriksson - who was second-last to take the chequered flag - who got closest to put his Motopark Dallara-Volkswagen 0.167 seconds adrift on the last lap.
While Ilott's race-two pole never looked seriously threatened it was the second-fastest times, which order the grid for race three, that provided the intrigue.
Prema's Ferrari junior Guan Yu Zhou held race-three pole until the closing stages, only for a raft of improvements to knock the Chinese racer down to fourth.
On the final lap it was McLaren-Honda protege Lando Norris who took second fastest overall and pole for race three, but then Ilott improved his second-best time to briefly move to the top, and finally Eriksson's overall improvement meant his previous best became his second best, and that was good enough to head the order.
"At the beginning I couldn't keep it on the track - I got done for track limits even on my out-lap!" said Ilott.
"But I went out on new tyres and put in a very good lap - calm and easy.
"And then I just couldn't replicate it because this track is so hard on the tyres, but I did a cool-down lap and got something out of it at the end."
Eriksson, whose best time fell slightly short of his Friday free-practice-topping time, said: "I was missing some performance but I'm still happy.
"It's really hard to do many laps in a row because it kills the tyres too much, so I did a cool run and then they told me I had one more lap to push to the max."
With Ilott and Eriksson locking out the front row for both races, Norris starts third for each in his Carlin car.
Jake Hughes put in a purple first sector on his final lap and once he'd completed it he moved up from fifth to fourth in his Hitech GP car, but then had the time disallowed for track limits, promoting Zhou back to fourth for both races.
Prema's Saturday winner and new points leader Maximilian Gunther had a tough session, and will start sixth for both races.
On his first weekend with Motopark, after only a two-hour shakedown at Oschersleben on Wednesday, David Beckmann qualified seventh for race two and fifth for race three.
Joey Mawson is eighth for each race in his Van Amersfoort Racing machine, while Jehan Daruvala (Carlin) and Nikita Mazepin (Hitech) alternate the fifth-row positions between them.
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