Pentus earns first FR3.5 pole

The Estonian jumped up the order from 12th place in the final seconds of the half hour session.

Pentus edged out reigning Formula Renault 2.0 Eurocup champion Albert Costa by 0.112 seconds. The Spaniard's final sector was a full second slower than the polesitter's time, leaving his Epsilon Euskadi team boss Joan Villadeprat frustrated.

"We are a bit upset. Not because Albert made a mistake, but because we have wasted the whole weekend going back and forth with the set-up," said Villadelprat. "Eventually we said, 'look we know this set-up works, this is what you are using,' and in the first race he went from 16th to sixth. He thought he was a hero, but we were wondering why he couldn't do that on Friday.

"I think Albert is the fastest driver in the pitlane. If I didn't think he had potential, I wouldn't be annoyed. Today his first sector time was astonishing. He was already fastest and then on his next lap his first sector was four tenths up on his own best. The mistake, though, is the third time this year that we've lost pole."

Daniel Zampieri, who struggled for race pace on Saturday, had a much more competitive showing with today's high downforce settings and took third place for Pons Racing.

Comtec also returned to form having shelved the low-downforce aero configuration (LAC) that is mandatory during Saturday races. Greg Mansell achieved his best grid position of the year with fourth. The Briton had made several good overtaking manoeuvres in race one, before a coming together with KMP's Victor Garcia. He had initially feared that damage from the incident could hamper his pace today.

Championship leader Mikhail Aleshin ended the morning in fifth, and will be joined on the third row by the second Comtec entry of Stefano Coletti, who retired in race one with a broken fuel pump.

Saturday winner Daniel Ricciardo had commented that his dominant display in race one might not translate into a similar performance with today's set-up. The British Formula 3 champion will be disappointed to have been proven correct after qualifying in seventh place for Tech 1 Racing.

Pos  Driver             Team             Time       Gap
 1.  Sten Pentus        Fortec           1m32.957s
 2.  Albert Costa       Epsilon Euskadi  1m33.069s  + 0.112s
 3.  Daniel Zampieri    Pons             1m33.118s  + 0.161s
 4.  Greg Mansell       Comtec           1m33.162s  + 0.205s
 5.  Mikhail Aleshin    Carlin           1m33.372s  + 0.415s
 6.  Stefano Coletti    Comtec           1m33.421s  + 0.464s
 7.  Daniel Ricciardo   Tech 1           1m33.521s  + 0.564s
 8.  Walter Grubmuller  P1               1m33.535s  + 0.578s
 9.  Jake Rosenzweig    Carlin           1m33.545s  + 0.588s
10.  Brendon Hartley    Tech 1           1m33.551s  + 0.594s
11.  Jon Lancaster      Fortec           1m33.588s  + 0.631s
12.  Anton Nebylitskiy  Kmp              1m33.611s  + 0.654s
13.  Nelson Panciatici  Junior Lotus     1m33.619s  + 0.662s
14.  Victor Garcia      Kmp              1m33.854s  + 0.897s
15.  Keisuke Kunimoto   Epsilon Euskadi  1m33.900s  + 0.943s
16.  Jan Charouz        P1               1m34.021s  + 1.064s
17.  Daniil Move        Junior Lotus     1m34.172s  + 1.215s
18.  Nathanael Berthon  Draco            1m34.352s  + 1.395s
19.  Federico Leo       Pons             1m34.354s  + 1.397s
20.  Julian Leal        Draco            1m34.370s  + 1.413s
21.  Sergio Canamasas   FHV Interwetten  1m34.381s  + 1.424s
22.  Bruno Mendez       FHV Interwetten  1m34.499s  + 1.542s