F3 Spa: Schumacher tops second qualifying, takes first series pole

Schumacher, in his second F3 season with the Prema Powerteam Dallara-Mercedes squad, put in a last-lap flier to defeat team-mate Ralf Aron by 0.280-seconds.

The session was much more conventional than Thursday's earlier qualifying for the first race, with all drivers going out from the beginning as thunder and lightning circled the Ardennes.

But apart from a few spots of rain, the session stayed dry and lap times in the cooler conditions were two seconds quicker than they were in the 37C heat of the afternoon.

The Prema and Motopark squads both pitted their drivers a couple of laps in to the session to fit fresh rubber, and the Italian team ended up with a 1-2-3-4, with the top seven drivers all setting their best efforts on the last lap.

Schumacher was delighted, although confessed to picking up a handy tow from Julian Hanses, which meant he outpaced Aron by four tenths in the first sector.

The Estonian closed the gap over the rest of the lap, including a purple sector two, but it wasn't quite enough.

Prema-run Ferrari juniors Guan Yu Zhou and Marcus Armstrong filled the third and fourth positions, but on second-best times, which determine the grid for the weekend's final race, they locked out the front row.

Zhou's second-fastest effort was 0.164s quicker than that of Armstrong, while Schumacher could only manage seventh and Aron 10th.

The result meant that four different Prema drivers took the four front-row slots on offer in the session.

Hitech GP sent its drivers out relatively late and Enaam Ahmed - after a miserable weekend last time out at Zandvoort - continued his bounce back to form by claiming the fifth fastest time overall, and ninth on the grid for race three.

Ahmed was chased in the overall order by Motopark duo Juri Vips and Fabio Scherer, with Vips sixth on both grids but Scherer dropping out of the top 10 for race three.

The other Prema driver, Robert Shwartzman, was eighth and the fastest of those not to improve on the final lap, although his second-best effort puts him third on the grid for Saturday's finale and he looks strong, having been quickest in the middle sector in Q1.

Carlin's Ferdinand Habsburg and Motopark's Red Bull Junior Dan Ticktum complete the top 10 on the grid for race two, with Ticktum moving up to eighth for the final race.

Two drivers who were outside the overall top 10 - first-race poleman Jehan Daruvala (Carlin) and Jonathan Aberdein (Motopark) - jump forward on the grid for race three to fourth and fifth respectively.

Race two grid

Race three grid