Palmer grabs pole at Monza

Date published : 21 May 2010 - 18:04:00

Formula 2 news Palmer grabs pole at Monza21 May 2010 / Results / PhotosJolyon Palmer has stormed to the top of the timesheets to clinch pole position for Saturday's first race of the weekend at Monza. The British driver, who set the fastest time in qualifying on Friday afternoon, will share the front row with Johan Jokinen after pipping the Dane by just fractions of a second. Palmer's effort eclipsed Jokinen by just 74 thousandths in what was an incredibly close session, with the top 16 covered by less than one second. Jokinen had looked on course for a maiden F2 pole but was forced to settle for second, narrowly ahead of Romania's Mihai Marinescu. Pole man Palmer is currently third in the standingsPole position for Palmer will add extra spice to the championship race, as lead duo Philipp Eng and Dean Stoneman could only manage eleventh and eighth respectively. Kazim Vasiliauskas was close to scoring his first top three grid slot of the campaign, but the Lithuanian had to settle for a place on the outside of row two after being squeezed out late on. Nicola de Marco equalled his best qualifying result of the season with fifth as the Italian continued to show good form at his home circuit. Ricardo Teixeira bounced back impressively from his massive Marrakech accident to put in one of the best qualifying performances of his career - the Angolan took sixth ahead of Armaan Ebrahim and Dean Stoneman. British duo Jack Clarke and Will Bratt were separated by just 14 thousandths in ninth and tenth, respectively; Bratt was the first driver to set a time on new rubber in the final 15 minutes and the 22-year-old briefly held third - with his tyres seemingly past their best however, while other drivers' were in their prime, Bratt dropped to tenth in the latter stages. Just six tenths of a second covered the top ten in what turned out to be the closest qualifying session of the season so far. A disappointed championship leader Philipp Eng will only line up on the sixth row of the grid for the weekend's opening race. Round 5 of 2010 will begin at 11:15am local time on Saturday (BST +1)