Virtuosi Racing has taken the first points of the 2022 FIA Formula 2 season thanks to a brilliant lap from debutant Jack Doohan in Qualifying on Friday.
Doohan's effort makes it four years in a row that a Virtuosi driver has finished first in the opening Qualifying session of the F2 season, with Guanyu Zhou achieving the feat in 2020 and 2021 and Luca Ghiotto in 2019.
The Australian Alpine F1 team junior took pole thanks to some ingenuity from the Norfolk-based team, who decided to run Doohan during the gap, with the majority of the field busy changing their tyres.
After setting a personal best Sector 1, Doohan went on to set two purple sectors to take provisional pole by more than half a second with an emphatic time of 1:40.542, before returning to the pits.
The 2021 Formula 3 vice-champion needn’t have gone back out. ART Grand Prix’s Théo Pourchaire and Hitech Grand Prix’ Jüri Vips attempted to beat his time in the second half of the session, but neither could match his incredible effort and they had to settle for second and third, respectively.
Doohan will have to wait until Sunday at 1:40pm local time to start from pole in the Feature Race. Before then, he will line up from 10th on the reverse grid in Saturday evening’s Sprint Race at 7.40pm local time.
