Soon, others caught up to Bustamante’s benchmark, including Pulling and Emely De Heus, with the latter putting in her best qualifying performance of the season, having never started higher than 11th on the grid. Pulling, also suffering with a lock-up on her first lap, soon went to the top of the timings with a 1m 56.439s.
Pin, on a different qualifying strategy to those at the top of the timesheets, finally headed out to get some banker laps in with 10 minutes left on the clock. The Mercedes-backed driver completed a quick lap to go second, but this was soon deleted for a track limits violation and meant the pressure was really on. She did eventually get in a lap to go fourth, but the results would be a very different story to her double-pole achievement last weekend in Lusail.
It looked to be a two-horse race for pole between Pulling and Chambers until Hamda Al Qubaisi leapt to the top of the times with two minutes left to go. Driving in front of her home fans, Al Qubaisi set a strong 1m 56.229s, but despite her best efforts wasn’t able to improve and settled for third at the chequered flag.
Pulling went even quicker on her final lap to end the session on top with a 1m 56.081s, with Chambers just 0.120s behind. They will lock out the front row for all three races, with Hamda Al Qubaisi guaranteed a second-row start for the same events.
Both Bustamante and Pin will start in the top five across all races, with Pin third for Race 3.
Emely De Heus secured her best result of the season to go sixth for Race 1, and will start ninth for Race 2 and 10th for Race 3. Ferrari’s Maya Weug will start from sixth for Race 2 and 3, whilst Nerea Martí and Lia Block qualified inside the top 10 for all three races.
