Much like practice yesterday, torrential rain affected qualifying for the 2018 United States V-Prix, however today it wasn't enough to stop championship leader Adrien Simon heading the field by a whopping nine tenths of a second to claim his third pole position of the season. The drivers queued at the end of the pitlane prior to the lights going green and splashed around early on as the weather radar suggested the conditions would only worsen, with Oleksandr Zozulya taking a shock early advantage to head the field for FIRST at their home race. With conditions getting no better despite drivers continually circulating, it looked like Zozulya may well head a very mixed grid indeed, until just past the half point in the session when the rain unexpectedly eased, and times began to tumble. With five minutes left Dmytro Kovalenko went second for AMR - eventually ending up sixteenth - before the Ingram duo of James Vasquez and Jean Mattson took a surprise front row lockout. Times tumbled yet further however and eventually the pace of the DS Mathershaw cars took them to the front - where they remained until the flag, Simon leading Allar Kangur in their first front row lockout of the season. Carson Davenport had been third with a stunning lap but was pushed to a still impressive fifth late on by Nathaniel Powers and Olen Inman, where he will share the third row with Ryota Yoshida. Behind them Klaas van Snelheid and Enrique Ruiz make up row four, with the two Ingrams rounding out the top ten. Johan Halvosen put himself in a strong position to be a contender for that crucial point with eleventh on the grid, while Sergio Álvarez ensured both Phoenix cars made it onto the first page of the timing screens with twelfth. Further back Puccio Giodano could only make it to fifteenth while Will Hoskins was also disappointed with seventeenth, and Viktor Östberg - pace setter from practice yesterday - struggled to twentieth, the Swede unable to explain what went wrong. Behind, both Meteor's will start from the back row after being excluded from the qualifying results for failing to submit a strategy in time. See below for official qualifying classification and grid with tyre choices: Comments are closed.
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