Maximilian Gunther completes Hungaroring European F3 pole hat-trick

The German beat the sister Prema Powerteam Dallara-Mercedes of star rookie Ralf Aron by 0.164 seconds to take the fastest time of the session, and his second-best lap - determining the grid for race three - was over four tenths clear of Red Bull junior Sergio Sette Camara's.

Like the earlier session, the absolute best time was discounted because of track limits, with Gunther lapping a tenth faster on this one, but this time it didn't change the identity of the polesitter.

"It's amazing to have all three poles today," said Gunther. "Second qualifying went very well even if I had a lot of problems with traffic early on - one guy was blocking like ridiculous for two laps.

"It was really tight to get the laptimes but I finally made it - the car was very good."

Like Gunther, Aron paid tribute to the Prema team - in the Estonian's case it was a miraculously quick change of a fuel pump that stranded him on track in free practice, but which only cost him half an hour of running.

Even so, Aron was grumpy not to do better than third on second-best times, as he rapidly caught slowing traffic in the last couple of laps, and then even this lap was taken away after the session for track limits, dumping him to 11th.

Sette Camara felt he could have planted his Motopark car on pole for race three, saying his second-best lap was on a par with his best - and therefore a tenth quicker than Gunther's - only for an error at the last corner to cost him half a second.

Chinese Ferrari protege Guan Yu Zhou put in his best qualifying effort to date to lap fourth fastest in his Motopark car ahead of temporary first-race poleman George Russell, but the Hitech GP man reversed the scores on second-best laps, Russell moving up further to third for race three after Aron was relegated.

Nick Cassidy continued his almost-but-not-quite day with a sixth and a fifth for Prema, with the top 10 for race two completed by Alessio Lorandi (Carlin), Ben Barnicoat (Hitech), a disappointed Lance Stroll (Prema) and Niko Kari (Motopark).

Apart from Gunther's best, track-limits offences pinged onto the timing screens with monotonous regularity - along with Aron the biggest losers on this count were Joel Eriksson, whose credited best was over a second slower than his actual fastest time, relegating him from fourth to 11th, and Lorandi, whose second-best puts him 19th, over five seconds slower than his quickest lap.

This all means the bottom end of the top 10 on the grid for race three will be Barnicoat, Eriksson, Stroll, the Van Amersfoort Racing car of Harrison Newey and Carlin's Ryan Tveter.

RACE TWO QUALIFYING

RACE THREE QUALIFYING