Wickens clinches F2 pole double

The Red Bull-backed driver produced a great late effort to snatch the race two pole from former GP2 racer Andy Soucek in the final three minutes of the session.

"I was really pleased with the first run, it was on old tyres so to get a 27.7 was pretty satisfying," Wickens said. "I got a bit worried when there were yellow flags on the first two laps of my second run. It wasn't ideal to do the time on the third lap on new tyres, but it was good enough.

"I think the races will be tight. It will be about who can push the most and keep their tyres in good condition for the finish."

Soucek himself had only jumped to the top of the times in the closing minutes on his new tyre run.

Mirko Bortolotti sat atop the timesheet for the majority of the half hour, but he was unable to respond to Wickens' and Soucek's final runs, and will start race two from third.

Nicola de Marco set the fourth quickest time earlier in the session, ahead of Philipp Eng and Mikhail Aleshin. The top 10 drivers in qualifying all lapped within four tenths of a second of Wickens' benchmark.

The session was stopped with just under a minute remaining when Pietro Gandolfi spun off at Turn 14.

Pos Driver                 Time         Gap
 1. Robert Wickens         1:27.488
 2. Andy Soucek            1:27.613  +0.125
 3. Mirko Bortolotti       1:27.672  +0.184
 4. Nicola de Marco        1:27.679  +0.191
 5. Philipp Eng            1:27.741  +0.253
 6. Mikhail Aleshin        1:27.772  +0.284
 7. Carlos Iaconelli       1:27.848  +0.360
 8. Kazim Vasiliauskas     1:27.869  +0.381
 9. Julien Jousse          1:27.872  +0.384
10. Henry Surtees          1:27.880  +0.392
11. Edoardo Piscopo        1:27.963  +0.475
12. Tobias Hegewald        1:28.100  +0.612
13. Sebastian Hohenthal    1:28.243  +0.755
14. Natacha Gachnang       1:28.253  +0.765
15. German Sanchez         1:28.303  +0.815
16. Tom Gladdis            1:28.360  +0.872
17. Alex Brundle           1:28.654  +1.166
18. Jack Clarke            1:28.716  +1.228
19. Henri Karjalainen      1:28.811  +1.323
20. Armaan Ebrahim         1:28.821  +1.333
21. Jason Moore            1:28.878  +1.390
22. Jens Hoing             1:29.332  +1.844
23. Jolyon Palmer          1:29.355  +1.867
24. Pietro Gandolfi        1:30.245  +2.757
25. Milos Pavlovic         no time