F2 Bahrain: Alpine junior Doohan storms to pole over Pourchaire

The 2021 F3 runner-up set a 1m40.542s to top the timesheet for only his third F2 feature race, after contesting the final two F2 rounds of 2021 for MP Motorsport.

Doohan, who joined the Alpine Academy during the off-season, pipped ART Grand Prix driver Pourchaire to the top spot by just over a tenth of a second in a session that was red flagged after just 58 seconds.

DAMS rookie Ayumu Iwasa span off at Turn 2 on his first lap out of the pits, the Japanese beaching his car in the gravel and ruining his qualifying as a result.

The Van Amersfoort Racing pair were first out on track when action resumed five minutes later, with Jake Hughes setting the first fast lap of the session with a 1m41.469s.

Doohan went straight into second with his first flying lap, setting a 1m41.614s, less than two-tenths behind Hughes.

Felipe Drugovich (MP Motorsport) briefly knocked Hughes off the top of the leaderboard, setting a 1m41.210s, before the Briton recaptured the top spot with a 1m41.121s.

Ralph Boschung was also in the mix for the top spots in the early stages, the Campos driver knocking Doohan out of the top three with a 1m41.554s. But Doohan went fastest on his next flying lap as the first driver to break into the 1m40s with a 1m40.542s, which wasn't beaten for the remainder of the session.

Sauber junior driver Pourchaire was just a tenth slower on his next fast run, but had his lap time deleted after exceeding track limits at Turn 4. The Monegasque addressed that by putting himself second on the following run, with a 1m40.683s.

Hitech Grand Prix's Juri Vips also broke into the 1m40s, briefly going second fastest with a 1m40.755s before Pourchaire pushed him into third.

Another F3 graduate, Carlin's Logan Sargeant, took fourth on his second appearance in F2 - having made a cameo at Jeddah last year with HWA Racelab - while Boschung and Sargeant’s team-mate Liam Lawson rounded out the top six.

Drugovich was tenth-fastest and will start on pole for Saturday’s reverse-grid sprint race, with Richard Verschoor (Trident) joining him on the front row.

A near-miss between Dennis Hauger and Vips - who was on a flying lap as Hauger entered the pitlane - will be investigated after the session.

Prema driver Hauger, the 2021 F3 champion, finished the session in 15th.

F2 Bahrain practice times:

Cla	Driver	Team	Laps	Time
1	Jack Doohan	Virtuosi Racing	9	1'40.542
2	Theo Pourchaire	ART Grand Prix	12	1'40.683
3	Jüri Vips	HitechGP	10	1'40.755
4	Logan Sargeant	Carlin	12	1'40.760
5	Ralph Boschung	Campos Racing	12	1'41.000
6	Liam Lawson	Carlin	11	1'41.100
7	Jehan Daruvala	Prema Powerteam	11	1'41.115
8	Jake Hughes	Van Amersfoort Racing	12	1'41.121
9	Richard Verschoor	Trident	10	1'41.178
10	Felipe Drugovich	MP Motorsport	10	1'41.210
11	Roy Nissany	Nissan e.Dams	11	1'41.218
12	Calan Williams	Trident	10	1'41.313
13	Marcus Armstrong	HitechGP	10	1'41.354
14	Marino Sato	Virtuosi Racing	12	1'41.374
15	Dennis Hauger	Prema Powerteam	11	1'41.509
16	Enzo Fittipaldi	Charouz Racing System	12	1'41.529
17	Olli Caldwell	Campos Racing	12	1'41.752
18	Clement Novalak	MP Motorsport	10	1'41.865
19	Frederik Vesti	ART Grand Prix	12	1'42.083
20	Cem Bolukbasi	Charouz Racing System	12	1'42.089
21	Amaury Cordeel	Van Amersfoort Racing	4	1'42.880
22	Ayumu Iwasa	Nissan e.Dams	0
View full results