Bahrain F2: 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 spun 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 teammate 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.

Bahrain F2 - Qualifying results:

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	3	Jack Doohan	Virtuosi Racing	1'40.542
2	10	Theo Pourchaire	ART Grand Prix	1'40.683	0.141
3	8	Jüri Vips	HitechGP	1'40.755	0.213
4	6	Logan Sargeant	Carlin	1'40.760	0.218
5	15	Ralph Boschung	Campos Racing	1'41.000	0.458
6	5	Liam Lawson	Carlin	1'41.100	0.558
7	2	Jehan Daruvala	Prema Powerteam	1'41.115	0.573
8	24	Jake Hughes	Van Amersfoort Racing	1'41.121	0.579
9	20	Richard Verschoor	Trident	1'41.178	0.636
10	11	Felipe Drugovich	MP Motorsport	1'41.210	0.668
11	16	Roy Nissany	Nissan e.dams	1'41.218	0.676
12	21	Calan Williams	Trident	1'41.313	0.771
13	7	Marcus Armstrong	HitechGP	1'41.354	0.812
14	4	Marino Sato	Virtuosi Racing	1'41.374	0.832
15	1	Dennis Hauger	Prema Powerteam	1'41.509	0.967
16	22	Enzo Fittipaldi	Charouz Racing System	1'41.529	0.987
17	14	Olli Caldwell	Campos Racing	1'41.752	1.210
18	12	Clement Novalak	MP Motorsport	1'41.865	1.323
19	9	Frederik Vesti	ART Grand Prix	1'42.083	1.541
20	23	Cem Bolukbasi	Charouz Racing System	1'42.089	1.547
21	25	Amaury Cordeel	Van Amersfoort Racing	1'42.880	2.338
22	17	Ayumu Iwasa	Nissan e.dams
View full results

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.