Monza European F3: Felix Rosenqvist takes race one pole for Prema

The Swede put himself in a great position to close the gap to championship leader Antonio Giovinazzi and current runner-up Charles Leclerc, who both finished in the lower reaches of the top 10 in warm-and-humid conditions.

While many runners got held up in huge trains of cars searching for track position, Rosenqvist gave himself a clear space in his Prema Powerteam Dallara-Mercedes and reaped the reward to head team-mate Jake Dennis, who improved to second fastest on the final lap, by 0.183 seconds.

"Sometimes you're lucky and get a good tow; sometimes it doesn't work," said Rosenqvist. "My strategy was to go alone and maybe get a little tow whenever there was an opportunity."

He added that he was on a quicker lap at the end when he was called into the pits by the team, with no chance of his pole position coming under threat.

With Dennis taking a five-place grid penalty for his incident with Sam MacLeod in the Pau Grand Prix, that elevates Santino Ferrucci to his first European F3 front row.

The American, who before Wednesday's test had only ever seen Monza as a six-year-old when the family visited the 2004 Italian Grand Prix, held second place for much of the session in his Mucke Motorsport Dallara-Mercedes before Dennis's late improvement.

The Mucke cars, like the Prema machines, are running with a small single plane at the top of the rear wing, and Ferrucci paid tribute to team-mate Mikkel Jensen, with whom he towed to quick times.

London-born Thai Alexander Albon took fourth fastest, and was the leading Volkswagen-engined runner - the Lotus junior will move up to third on the grid with Dennis's penalty.

Similarly, Raoul Hyman moves up from fifth to fourth in the starting line-up, the South African BRDC Formula 4 graduate putting in easily his best qualifying performance so far with Team West-Tec.

The last two beneficiaries of Dennis's penalty are Prema team-mate Lance Stroll and Jensen, who will share the third row of the grid for the opening race.

Giovinazzi will start eighth. The Carlin driver has been chasing an understeer problem since Wednesday's test and, although the car is improving, he admitted there was still work to do before second qualifying.

Another Carlin runner, George Russell, showed a glimpse of a return to qualifying form, the Brit taking ninth place ahead of Leclerc, who also experienced understeer as well as getting frustrated in traffic.

Two more grid penalties will be served by Alessio Lorandi and Dorian Boccolacci. Lorandi had an engine change after Wednesday's test so will be relegated 10 places for each race at his home weekend, converting his 18th position to 28th.

Boccolacci is taking the last of his three penalties, hanging over from the Pau weekend, in race one, dropping him from 23rd to 33rd.

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