Piastri secures pole position for Feature Race at Silverstone

Prema’s Oscar Piastri claimed pole position with two minutes to go after his teammate Robert Shwartzman went off into the gravel, bringing out the red flag. Piastri was followed by Guanyu Zhou and Richard Verschoor.

In the practice session, Carlin’s Dan Ticktum set the pace with the fastest lap, setting a 1:41.750 lap time to top the timings on his home race weekend at Silverstone. As qualifying went underway, it was noticed that drivers switched from the hards in free practice to the yellow mediums for qualifying, the latter allowing for faster lap times at the cost of grip.

The first benchmark, in the form of the provisional pole, was set by MP Motorsport’s Richard Verschoor, setting a time of 1:40.692. Shortly after, however, UNI-Virtuosi’s Felipe Drugovich went faster by 3 hundredths of a second to only have Prema Racing’s Oscar Piastri claim provisional pole with 15 minutes to spare.

With less than 15 minutes to go, Piastri, Ticktum, Drugovich, Shwartzman, and tVips rounded up the top 5, with most of the drivers headed into the pits for a fresh set of tires, with both Premas and Carlins swapping for new sets to try and set better times. With 10 minutes to go, Piastri, Ticktum, and DAMS’ Marcus Armstrong tried to set flying laps, in the hopes of securing the provisional pole.

A second is what separated the top 11 as misery continued to pile up for HWA’s Alessio Deledda as he struggled to just keep it past the 107% mark, having a gap of +2.5 seconds to the nearest competitor. The performance of ART Grand Prix’s Theo Pourchaire, who bounced back after an injury he had sustained in Baku, was surprising, however. Pourchaire set a stunning lap, just 5 tenths of Piastri.

With 2 minutes to go, Shwartzman spun at Stowe and ended up in the gravel, bringing out the red flag for the session, putting an end to any possible attempts to set a better lap than Piastri’s.

The top 10 from qualifying are as follows: