F2 Qatar GP 2025 Qualifying: Fornaroli Inherits Pole After Goethe Penalty

F2 Qatar GP 2025 Qualifying gave us one result on track and another in the stewards’ room. Oliver Goethe looked set with the lap. Leonardo Fornaroli missed pole by 0.040s. Then a late call for impeding Martinius Stenshorne flipped the order and pushed the championship leader to the front for Sunday. A session that felt settled turned again under the lights.

Key Points – F2 Qatar GP 2025 Qualifying

• Goethe fastest with a 1:36.115 but drops three grid places for impeding Stenshorne
• Fornaroli inherits pole for the Feature Race
• Martins moves to P3 ahead of Stanek and Dunne
• Montoya’s early pace fades to P6
• Tsolov continues strong late-season form in P7
• Browning and Crawford stuck deep in the pack
• Slipstream remains key around Lusail with gains up to 0.5s
• Title momentum swings again heading into Saturday

Fornaroli Sets the Tone as the Field Finds Grip

The session found its first rhythm quickly. PREMA’s Sebastián Montoya set the early benchmark with a 1:37.9 before the Invicta Racing pairing arrived with more intent. Roman Stanek reset the order. Fornaroli then stretched clear with a 1:37.850 to take early control.

ART moved next. Victor Martins pieced together a clean second attempt and jumped to P1 with a 1:37.512. For a moment, it looked like the field had stabilised. That illusion lasted about one lap.

MP Motorsport fired back. Goethe and Verschoor both hit the window on the Soft tyre and vaulted into a temporary one-two. Clean laps. Good rotation through the mid-speed corners. Enough confidence to suggest there was still more time in the car.

Stanek replied once again with a 1:37.189. Fornaroli reacted with a bigger step. A 1:36.996. The kind of lap that tends to hold a Lusail qualifying session unless someone finds a perfect tow and a clear road.

Goethe almost did. His run to within 0.075s showed where the session was heading.

Final Runs Deliver Another Twist

Fresh Softs came out across the board for the final ten minutes. Dino Beganovic was the first to strike hard, grabbing provisional pole with a 1:36.826. It didn’t last. Fornaroli immediately reclaimed P1 with a 1:36.307, finding the grip he’d been missing in the middle sector earlier.

Stanek followed again. Close, but just outside the window.

Then Goethe delivered the lap that mattered.
A 1:36.115.
Fastest by 0.040s.
Enough to put him on top for what looked like a maiden Feature Race pole.

Behind the leaders, Dunne held his momentum and locked in a career-strong P5 for Rodin. Montoya faded slightly as the track evolved. Tsolov and Villagómez continued their late-season consistency with strong laps inside the top eight.

The drivers who needed a clean qualifying didn’t get it. Crawford never found a lap clear of traffic and landed P15. Browning’s final attempt slipped away in the final sector and left him P18.

Two major title contenders starting deep. Two very different Saturday prospects.

The Penalty That Changed the Grid

The story didn’t end when the chequered flag fell. Moments after the session, Goethe and the MP Motorsport team were called to the stewards. The allegation was simple. Unnecessary impeding of Martinius Stenshorne at Turn 6 on a cool-down lap.

Video review confirmed it. Car 5 could have moved earlier. The block was avoidable. And with that, the penalty was automatic.

Three grid places. Sprint and Feature.

Goethe keeps the fastest lap on paper but loses the top spot for both races.
Fornaroli inherits pole.
Martins moves into the top three.
Stanek begins Sunday right behind his teammate.

A qualifying hour that never felt settled ended with one final twist.

Final Classification – F2 Qatar GP 2025 Qualifying

Standout Stories

Fornaroli shows title-leader composure
Clean execution in every phase. When the dust settled, he came out on top.

Goethe’s raw pace remains the talking point
The penalty hurts, but the speed is real.

Martins rebounds at the right time
ART needed this. He delivered.

Dunne continues an impressive run of form
One of his strongest sessions of the season.

Crawford and Browning in a crisis window
Both contenders start deep. Both need big rescue drives.

Slipstream remains critical at Lusail
The tow worth up to half a second shaped the faster laps. Those who timed their runs got the benefit.

Tyre Insight – What Pirelli Saw Under the Lights

Pirelli’s read on the session added another layer to a night that never settled. Every driver ran the red Soft and the track kept improving until the final laps. Most of the field found their peak right at the flag. Goethe and Fornaroli were no different.

The bigger picture sits with the compounds. F2 has the Hard and Soft here. The Hard is the only carry-over from last season. It’s tough to warm up and easy to overwork. Drivers chase temperature, push too hard, and pay for it a few corners later. That will shape the opening laps of both races.

The Soft is the big shift from 2024. No Medium this time. The gap between the tyres is larger and the Soft won’t survive a full Sprint distance. Teams will need to manage bursts of pace, not long runs. Night-time Sprint. Daytime Feature. Two different grip profiles and two different tyre behaviours to navigate.

Last year’s numbers still matter. Hard-to-Medium was the move in 2024, even if Bearman nearly held on with the opposite plan. Safety cars blurred the picture by cutting pit stop losses. With the grid as mixed as it is this weekend, the same thing could happen again.

Tyre life. Track evolution. Temperature swings.
All three will shape how far drivers like Crawford and Browning can climb.

Sprint Ahead

Under the lights, Lusail always rewards conviction on corner entry and punishes hesitation. Fornaroli holds the prime position. Goethe sits close enough to create pressure from the first braking zone. Martins starts with space to attack. Stanek lurks behind both Invictas with a clean outside line.

Further back, the championship fight gets messy. Crawford and Browning will spend the opening laps fighting traffic, tyre warm-up and the long drag to Turn 1. Any early safety car could reshape the Sprint and change Sunday before it even arrives.

Expect movement. Expect high-risk overtakes.
Expect the title race to tighten again.

Coffee Corner Take

F2 loves giving you the headline and then ripping it up a few minutes later. Goethe had the lap. Clean. Committed. A step above what he’d shown all year. But this is Lusail. Traffic matters. Timing matters more. And a cool-down lap in the wrong place became the moment that defined everything.

Fornaroli didn’t need to be fastest to come out ahead. That’s the mark of a driver who knows where the season sits. He kept the margin tight. Managed the session. Delivered when the track was still shifting underneath him. When the stewards flipped the result, he was already in the position to benefit. That’s not luck. That’s the rhythm of a campaign that has stayed on the front foot since summer.

Goethe will feel the penalty because he knows what he left on the table. The raw pace was real. The lap was real. The drop hurts because this was the window to hit back at the title leader. Instead, he starts behind him twice. That changes the whole tone of the weekend.

Martins looked sharp. Dunne continues to grow into a driver who belongs at the front. And the drivers who needed calm found themselves walking into a storm. Crawford and Browning start in the deep water again. Every point becomes heavier now.

This didn’t settle anything.
It just reminded everyone how quickly F2 can pull the floor from under you.