F3: Home favourite Browning takes dramatic pole position at Silverstone

Hitech Pulse-Eight’s Championship leader Luke Browning took pole position at a dramatic rain-hampered Silverstone Qualifying, beating Jenzer Motorsport’s Max Esterson to the top spot.

The session got off to an intense start as, while warming up their slick tyres, the drivers began reporting heavy rain to their teams.

This put a lot of importance on the first flying laps as Van Amersfoort Racing’s Noel León went fastest ahead of MP Motorsport’s McLaren-backed Alexander Dunne in second and PREMA Racing’s Gabriele Minì in third.

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Most of the grid then came back into the pit lane but several drivers like Minì and his teammate Dino Beganovic, who had not yet set a time, stayed out.

However, a heavy downpour followed meaning that nobody could improve, forcing the teams to bring their cars back into the pit lane.

With the session winding down to a close, and León set for pole, plenty of the grid returned to the track looking to do as much learning in mixed conditions as possible ahead of Saturday’s Sprint Race.

But with a minute to go, conditions started to improve with the timing screens set alight by purple and green sectors.

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This meant Browning, who had been down in P13, rocketed up to the top of the leaderboard with a time of 1:44.992, to lead Esterson by just 0.045s with Trident’s Sami Meguetounif in third.

Meguetounif’s teammate Leonardo Fornaroli had earlier gone fastest but he was forced to settle for P4 ahead of ART Grand Prix driver Laurens van Hoepen.

Charlie Wurz ended up in P6 for Jenzer ahead of the ART pair of Christian Mansell and Nikola Tsolov, with British driver Callum Voisin in P9 for Rodin Motorsport.

Matías Zagazeta made it three Jenzer cars in the top 10 while PREMA’s Arvid Lindblad was the next best placed Briton in P11.

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León, after staying in the pit lane, dropped down to P12, putting him on reverse grid pole for the Sprint Race, which is set to start at 09:20 local time on Saturday.

For a full report of the FIA Formula 3 Silverstone Qualifying, visit the official website here.