 Credit: Malcolm Griffiths Championship leader and Ferrari Academy driver Rafael Camara put in a stunning performance to take pole position for the second successive round at the start of 2025. The Brazilian rookie made it the perfect Friday, after topping the morning's Free Practice session, where he beat Nikola Tsolov for fastest with a lap time of 1:50.984. However, when it came to qualifying, Camara picked up from where he left off and took pole position for the second time in just his second ever FIA Formula 3 qualifying session and has put himself in a good position to add to his Feature Race victory in the season opener. Camara took pole position from Callum Voisin of Rodin Motorsport, who went second fastest at the end of the session. Teammate of Camara, Charlie Wurz completed the top three in another great result for the Italian outfit. After qualifying 12th, Hitech TGR's Joshua Dufek will start the Saturday sprint race from reverse grid pole. The reverse grid is set to have the front row locked out by Hitech TGR with Martinius Stenshorne qualifying 11th, is set to start second, with the top 12 reversed to form the sprint race grid. How Formula 3 qualifying unfolded in BahrainFormula 3 may be feeling quite familiar with the Bahrain International Circuit, having tested here in recent times. However, it was time to put what was learnt in these new cars to good use, as it was time to go qualifying for round two of the championship. It had been almost a month since the last race weekend of the FIA Formula 3 Championship took place at Albert Park in Melbourne, Australia. That round it was a brilliant showing from Trident but more importantly Rafael Camara who took pole on the Friday and then converted it to Feature Race victory on Sunday! Camara leads the championship and already so far at Bahrain has shone. In testing, he set the fastest time across the three days. In addition, Camara topped Friday morning's Free Practice session prior to qualifying! There would be a green light on at the end of the pit lane, and the 30 minutes of qualifying was underway with many cars heading out of the track early on in the session. Hanging back would be the Trident & AIX trios as they were wanting to avoid traffic on their laps. The others would be fighting for a track position to give themselves the best possible opportunity to set the quickest possible lap times! Eventually, they would continue on to their first flying lap attempts. After the first set of lap times it would be the Bulgarian Red Bull junior Nikola Tsolov who held provisional pole after an impressive first lap time for Campos Racing. After finishing second in the morning Free Practice session he was holding provisional pole with a 1:50.506. Elevating themselves up to second and third respectively, following Tsolov's lap time, would be DAMS' Christian Ho and ART Grand Prix's James Wharton. A competitive field returned to the pits for a change of tyres ahead of their second flying laps in the session. Track limits were playing their part in proceedings with many drivers having their lap times deleted so drivers needed to be careful as they headed back out onto the track with fresh tyres, in an attempt to improve their lap times. On the second run was the Rodin Motorsport driver Callum Voisin who would take provisional pole with a great lap time around the Bahrain International Circuit. A 1:49.882 would be 0.023 in front of Alessandro Giusti who initially took provisional pole for MP Motorsport. 10 minutes remained and the top five were separated by 0.227 as Voisin led the way from Giusti, Rafael Camara, Nikola Tsolov and Charlie Wurz. The track limits proved to be a problem for Campos' Mari Boya, Javier Sagrera and Louis Sharp as all three had their times deleted following violations on their fastest lap times. All three dropped into the bottom four positions of the timing pages. Following one final pit stop and review of data, the 30 drivers headed back out onto the circuit for one final flying lap attempt at the Bahrain International Circuit in one final hunt for pole position. With a magnificent lap on his final lap, championship leader Camara blew the rest of the field away with a stunning effort and set a 1:49.214 for Trident, which was going to take some beating but it would fail to be beaten! For the second consecutive round, in just his second Formula 3 qualifying the Ferrari Driver Academy Brazilian, Rafael Camara, had taken pole position. A stunning effort from Camara and he was going to have a great opportunity at taking his second Feature Race win on Sunday. Camara added two championship points to his tally as a result and therefore extended his championship lead by that amount. The Trident driver took pole position ahead of Rodin's Callum Voisin in second place, who after a great session missed out on pole position by over a tenth of a second. Camara's Trident teammate Charlie Wurz finished third. DAMS' Christian Ho and MP Motorsport's Bruno Del Pino completed the top five in fourth and fifth respectively. All three had achieved their best qualifying in Formula 3 to date. ART Grand Prix's Tuukka Taponen finished sixth ahead of the third Trident of Noah Stromstead in seventh, which would round off another impressive qualifying for the team. Eighth was Nikola Tsolov for Campos ahead of Alessandro Giusti in ninth of MP Motorsport. On debut, AIX Racing driver Freddie Slater impressed massively to qualify in 10th place and with the reversing of the top 12 for the Saturday sprint race, the British driver will start third. This will be behind Martinius Stenshorne and Joshua Dufek who qualified 11th and 12th respectively. Joshua Dufek will be the driver who will start from the reverse grid pole position on Saturday in the sprint race, which will come next! 2025 FIA Formula 3 Championship: Round 2 - Bahrain Qualifying provisional classification
 Brandon Whiteside
Writer - F1 Journal
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