Silverstone F3: Red Bull's Vips sees off Prema pair for pole

With 30 cars sparring for track position, there were a large number of late improvements, and by the end the top 28 wound up within 1.6 seconds of pole position.

Vips had topped the session on multiple occasions but the Austria race one winner was the last frontrunner across the line to set a 1m43.902s.

Ferrari junior Marcus Armstrong joined Vips on the front row of the grid for Saturday’s race.

The Prema driver was less than a tenth adrift, the only other driver to break the 1m44s threshold. He had run off the track one lap earlier joining the Wellington Straight and was lucky not to damage his car.

Jehan Daruvala made it two Prema cars in the top three, as one of a flurry of late improvers.

Christian Lundgaard – hamstrung in Austria after he and ART teammate teammate David Beckmann were disqualified from qualifying as their physios were deemed to be working on their cars in the pits by holding fans to a radiator duct – took fifth.

The Danish driver narrowly headed Vips’ Hitech teammate Leo Pulcini who rounded out the top five.

Robert Shwartzman took sixth and was the last of the Prema drivers. He had been second with just seconds on the clock remaining, but was one of many shuffled back by a host of late improvers.

In seventh, the youngest driver on the grid, Red Bull-backed Liam Lawson, made use of the alternate strategy running in the middle of the session for his best qualifying of the season so far with MP Motorsport.

Pedro Piquet took eighth for Trident, which had topped the session with less than a minute to go with Niko Kari who was shuffled all the way back to 12th.

Fabio Scherer was another shuffled back late on but is enjoying his best weekend yet with the Sauber Junior Team in ninth, while Yifei Ye took 10th but faces a five-place grid drop from the last round. That will promote HWA’s Jake Hughes, winner of race two in Austria, into the top 10.

The only new driver for this round, Jenzer's Federico Malvestiti, qualified 29th, 2.2 seconds slower than Vips.

Session results:

Cla	#	Driver	Team	Time	Gap
1	21	Jüri Vips	HitechGP	1'43.902
2	26	Marcus Armstrong	Prema Powerteam	1'43.998	0.096
3	27	Jehan Daruvala	Prema Powerteam	1'44.014	0.112
4	3	Christian Lundgaard	ART Grand Prix	1'44.073	0.171
5	20	Leonardo Pulcini	HitechGP	1'44.139	0.237
6	28	Robert Shwartzman	Prema Powerteam	1'44.218	0.316
7	4	Liam Lawson	MP Motorsport	1'44.360	0.458
8	18	Pedro Piquet	Trident	1'44.403	0.501
9	8	Fabio Scherer	Charouz Racing System	1'44.433	0.531
10	22	Ye Yifei	HitechGP	1'44.461	0.559
11	11	Jake Hughes	HWA AG	1'44.462	0.560
12	19	Niko Kari	Trident	1'44.476	0.574
13	1	David Beckmann	ART Grand Prix	1'44.581	0.679
14	2	Max Fewtrell	ART Grand Prix	1'44.584	0.682
15	9	Raoul Hyman	Charouz Racing System	1'44.647	0.745
16	31	Logan Sargeant	Carlin	1'44.746	0.844
17	7	Lirim Zendeli	Charouz Racing System	1'44.756	0.854
18	6	Richard Verschoor	MP Motorsport	1'44.967	1.065
19	25	Sebastian Fernandez	Campos Racing	1'44.984	1.082
20	30	Felipe Drugovich	Carlin	1'45.020	1.118
21	23	Alex Peroni	Campos Racing	1'45.088	1.186
22	17	Devlin DeFrancesco	Trident	1'45.109	1.207
23	12	Keyvan Andres	HWA AG	1'45.110	1.208
24	5	Simo Laaksonen	MP Motorsport	1'45.142	1.240
25	10	Bent Viscaal	HWA AG	1'45.229	1.327
26	14	Yuki Tsunoda	Jenzer Motorsport	1'45.301	1.399
27	16	Andreas Estner	Jenzer Motorsport	1'45.435	1.533
28	29	Teppei Natori	Carlin	1'45.590	1.688
29	15	Federico Malvestiti	Jenzer Motorsport	1'46.103	2.201
30	24	Alessio Deledda	Campos Racing	1'47.068	3.166
View full results