Victor Martins takes pole at Yas Marina in the final qualifying of the season

Victor Martins claimed Pole for this weekend's feature race after he pipped Bortoleto to the post in this afternoon's final qualifying session of the season.

The ART Grand Prix driver was the fastest in qualifying for the first time this season and denied championship leader Gabriel Bortoleto the top spot for Sunday's race in a very close session.

Fellow championship contenders Paul Aron and Isack Hadjar settled for third and fourth place respectively. Hadjar failed to achieve the result he would of liked, after coming straight out of Vesrtappen's F1 car into the session. 

Qualifying started out with Martins' name being at the top of the time sheets from the early stages, putting in a time in the 1:36s which was already beating the fastest time in practice. A thrilling qualifying followed.

With the Supersoft tyre on, the drivers continued to improve out on track with Bortoleto capitalising and taking provisional pole off the frenchman. Invicta Racing were flying with their drivers occupying first and third on the leaderboard with 18 minutes left of qualifying. 

Meanwhile, elsewhere in the championship fight, contenders Hadjar and Aron were running P5 and P6 after their second push laps and both had work to do to close the gap to the championship leader. 

After going slowly round Turn 16, Kush Maini was to be investigated after the session for an impeding incident involving DAMS Lucas Oil driver Jak Crawford.

Bortoleto didn't get to enjoy the top spot for long as Martins reclaimed P1 with an incredible 1:35.745. 

Bortoleto responded, coming close to swapping the top two around yet again, placing himself 0.035 seconds behind the Alpine Academy driver. 

The Brazilian certainly had luck on his side with the red flags being waved shortly after he crossed the line due to Rafael Villagómez stopping out on track in the Van Amersfoort Racing car.

With just over 4 minutes left on the clock, the drivers took to the track again to try and make the final moments of the last qualifying session of the season count.

When the chequered flag waved, Martins narrowly remained on top ahead of Bortoleto after neither driver improved on their original times. The two drivers were separated by 0.035s. 

Incredible performances were shown throughout the grid with Amaury Cordeel clinching reverse grid pole by finishing in P10 for Hitech Pulse-Eight. 

In the post race press conference, the frenchman seemed delighted with his performance.

Martins said:" I am so proud of the work we have put in. We were already counting down, we can only have two opportunities, now one pole position left and we finally got it. It’s good, it’s showing that we are back in form now fighting with the title contenders."

When asked about the championship battle that was ahead of him this weekend, Bortoleto reamined positive:

"I’m not going to lie when you have a Championship that you are fighting for, you need to choose every step you take in the right way. Honestly it doesn’t change much for me right now, whatever happens, happens, we have done a good Quali and now we go for the Sprint and Feature to see what happens."

Following the session, the stewards looked into the incident between Maini and Crawford and deemed that Kush Maini impeded the American and has been issued a three-place grid penalty. 

It is all to play for in the final races of the season and with a championship at stake, it's going to be a great weekend of racing to come.

Times for the rest of the F2 action this weekend
Sprint Race - 7/12/24 at 16:15 local time 
Feature Race - 8/12/24 at 13.25 local time

Katie Shepherd 
​Writer - F1 Journal