Ricciardo on pole at Magny-Cours
Tech 1 Racing's Daniel Ricciardo claimed his fourth Formula Renault 3.5 pole position of the season at Magny-Cours this morning. The British Formula 3 champion edged out Nathanael Berthon by 0.160 seconds
Race one winner Mikhail Aleshin will start third. The Carlin man was perhaps still thinking about his laps yesterday in Renault's R29 Formula 1 car when he spun on the exit of the final chicane commencing a quick lap.
Czech Filip Salaquarda outqualified his highly-rated ISR team-mate Esteban Guerrieri for the third time in four races, and will join Aleshin on the second row of this afternoon's grid.
Ricciardo's pole ends a disappointing recent run, in which he has dropped behind Guerrieri into third place in the drivers' standings.
"Since Monaco things haven't been going that well," said Ricciardo, "so it's good to be back on pole. Traffic is the easiest excuse, but we did have a problem yesterday. At the end of that session we had a clutch problem as well, so the problems were building up. I was really struggling for pace yesterday, and I only finished sixth in the race through luck and people going off ahead.
"If it rains today I hope we can find something else. I have a feeling our problems were tyre related. We just didn't get them working. Perhaps with it being a smooth surface we didn't scrub them in correctly, but they weren't behaving how wet tyres should.
"Today, everything went quite to plan. I went out on fresh tyres just to get a feel of the balance, and then with about 13 minutes to go I put on new tyres. We'll see how the race goes, if it is dry I am confident, but in the wet it was like driving on a set of ice cubes."
Guerrieri will start fifth, and has the potential to renew his rivalry with Stefano Coletti from race one as the Monegasque will start directly behind. Coletti had held provisional pole with five minutes left on the clock until being bumped down the order in quick succession by Ricciardo, Berthon and Guerrieri.
Walter Grubmuller caused the session to be abandoned with less than a minute remaining when his P1 Motorsport machine ground to a halt.
One of the stars of Saturday's race, Jon Lancaster suffered a repeat of the ECU problem that forced him to start from the pitlane in race one and will line-up 14th.
Pos Driver Team Time Gap 1. Daniel Ricciardo Tech 1 1m26.390s 2. Nathnael Berthon Draco 1m26.550s + 0.160s 3. Mikhail Aleshin Carlin 1m26.617s + 0.227s 4. Filip Salaquarda ISR 1m26.634s + 0.244s 5. Esteban Guerrieri ISR 1m26.668s + 0.278s 6. Stefano Coletti Comtec 1m26.697s + 0.307s 7. Albert Costa Epsilon Euskadi 1m26.712s + 0.322s 8. Nelson Panciatici Junior Lotus 1m26.967s + 0.577s 9. Sten Pentus Fortec 1m27.281s + 0.891s 10. Victor Garcia KMP 1m27.328s + 0.938s 11. Daniil Move Junior Lotus 1m27.342s + 0.952s 12. Daniel Zampieri Pons 1m27.394s + 1.004s 13. Brendon Hartley Tech 1 1m27.440s + 1.050s 14. Jon Lancaster Fortec 1m27.482s + 1.092s 15. Jake Rosenzweig Carlin 1m27.500s + 1.110s 16. Jan Charouz P1 1m27.508s + 1.118s 17. Julian Leal Draco 1m27.597s + 1.207s 18. Anton Nebylitskiy KMP 1m27.633s + 1.243s 19. Keisuke Kunimoto Epsilon Euskadi 1m27.986s + 1.596s 20. Walter Grubmuller P1 1m28.215s + 1.825s 21. Sergio Canamasas FHV Interwetten 1m28.312s + 1.922s 22. Greg Mansell Comtec 1m28.647s + 2.257s 23. Bruno Mendez FHV Interwetten 1m29.630s + 3.240s 24. Federico Leo Pons 1m41.111s + 14.721s
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