F2 Azerbaijan GP: Juri Vips takes pole in Baku
10th June 2022Two-time Azerbaijan winner, Hitech’s Juri Vips, secured pole position in Baku after he beat Carlin’s Liam Lawson by one-tenth of a second.
How qualifying unfolded…
In usual fashion, as soon as the pit lane exit light went green, all of the drivers quickly bolted out onto the track on the purple-ringed supersoft tyres.
As a result, Van Amersfoort Racing’s Jake Hughes – who led the field around the track – was the first driver to set a non-competitive lap time, a 2:08.982. Naturally, the Briton went on to set the initial lap time for the drivers to beat. However, the VAR driver was quickly beaten by Dams’ Ayumu Iwasa who went to P1 with a blistering lap of 1:54.483, two seconds faster than Hughes.
Iwasa’s time would be a tough one to beat for the remaining 24 drivers as Hitech’s Liam Lawson set the pole lap time last season, two-tenths quicker than the Japanese driver’s time. Hitech’s Marcus Armstrong almost toppled Iwasa but the New Zealander fell short of the provisional pole time by four-thousands of a second.
MP Motorsport’s Clement Novalak and Campos’ Ralph Boschung were soon noted by the race stewards for impeding, quickly followed by an incident with Vips, which also included Boschung. However, the Boschung/Vips incident saw no further action from race control.
With 18 minutes left on the clock, Boschung couldn’t turn the car into turn three and went onto the run-off area, which brought out the yellow flag in the first sector.
As the clock neared its last 10 minutes, the grid returned to the Baku City Circuit to restart their preparation laps on fresh supersoft tyres.
With just under six minutes left on the clock, Iwasa clipped the outside barrier at turn three. In the process, the Japanese driver damaged his front-right suspension as he tried to take a higher amount of speed through the corner, in a bid to cement his pole position.
When the qualifying session got back underway, the drivers had to quickly get their tyres prepared quicker than they would’ve liked.
Prema’s Dennis Hauger was the next driver to be noted by the stewards for an unsafe release. The driver, and his mechanics, put the car into the path Dams’ Roy Nissany. This was soon upgraded to an investigation, which was expected to be taken place after the session.
In the final runs, the two-time winner in Azerbaijan last season, Vips pipped both Lawson and Hauger respectively to take pole position ahead of the feature race on Sunday.
That’s it for the article: F2 Azerbaijan GP: Juri Vips takes pole in Baku! With the grid set who do you think will be the Sprint and/or feature race winner this weekend? Let us know in the comments!
Read more Formula Two here:
- F2 Monaco: Felipe Drugovich extends lead with feature race win
- F2 Monaco: Dennis Hauger secures sprint race win as Jake Hughes stalls
- F2 Monaco Qualifying: Liam Lawson on pole after Drugovich crashes
- F2 Spanish Grand Prix: Felipe Drugovich takes max points in feature race win
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Hi, I’m Kamron. I created ApexMotorsports.co.uk in the dying embers of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship. It allowed me freedom to write whatever I wanted to write about which was all things motorsports, my passion.
I have put a lot of effort in over the years to keep this website in its best shape and I’ve loved seeing the brand grow consistently, month-on-month, year-on-year. My ambition is to keep watching this brand grow into a primary outlet of news for all things motorsports whilst fueling my desire to pursue a career in sports journalism, specialising in motorsports.
Kamron Kent
Hi, I'm Kamron. I created ApexMotorsports.co.uk in the dying embers of the 2021 Formula 1 world championship. It allowed me freedom to write whatever I wanted to write about which was all things motorsports, my passion. I have put a lot of effort in over the years to keep this website in its best shape and I've loved seeing the brand grow consistently, month-on-month, year-on-year. My ambition is to keep watching this brand grow into a primary outlet of news for all things motorsports whilst fueling my desire to pursue a career in sports journalism, specialising in motorsports.
