Monza F3: Pourchaire takes maiden pole, three teams under investigation

The session mirrored last year's FIA F3 qualifying session at the Italian circuit, which resulted in penalties for 17 drivers after the majority of the 30-car field jostled for track position and ended up ruining each other's flying laps.

In similarly bizarre scenes this year, the drivers ran in a safety car restart-like formation on the entry to the final corner prior to the final qualifying runs to try and get in a position to receive a tow from the cars in front.

It was 17-year-old Pourchaire (below) who emerged from the chaos to post a 1m37.301s and take his first FIA F3 pole and the four bonus points that come with it.

He was over four-tenths quicker than second-placed Lirim Zendeli, however Pourchaire's ART Grand Prix team - along with Zendeli's Trident and points leaders Prema - face a post-session investigation for impeding other drivers.

Pourchaire's team-mate Alexander Smolyar completed the top three in the provisional qualifying results.

Red Bull junior Liam Lawson's ever-fading title hopes were dealt another critical blow when he left the pits with a cooling fan still attached to his Hitech GP-run machine.

He posted the fourth-fastest time, but he faces an investigation for the incident that brought out the red flag with just under 10 minutes of the session remaining.

Trident's David Beckmann led the session after the first runs but dropped to fifth place, with Prema's Frederik Vesti falling from second to sixth place.

Vesti's title-contending team-mates Logan Sargeant and Oscar Piastri found themselves in the middle of the frenetic scenes and could only manage to post the 10th and 12th fastest time respectively.

Matteo Nannini - nephew of 1989 Japanese Grand Prix winner Alessandro - earned his best qualifying result of the season in seventh place ahead of HWA Racelab's Jake Hughes and his team-mate Calan Williams.

A frustrated Hughes was one of a number of drivers to set a fastest sector time before encountering the Ascari chicane, which was littered with almost a dozen slow-moving cars.

Practice pacesetter David Schumacher set the 30th and slowest time for Carlin, over 2.1s adrift of Pourchaire's benchmark.

Monza F3 qualifying results