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Charles Leong from BlackArts Racing takes pole position for AFR in Shanghai

Source：Asian Formula Renault Post：2017-08-26

Charles Leong along with his teammate Pavan Ravishankar led a BlackArts Racing one-two in qualifying of AFR in Shanghai International Circuit.

The two young drivers Cao Zhuo and Daniel Lu from Asia Racing Team were the fastest drivers leading the two practices while the championship leader Charles Leong was also eager to take his 1st pole position in Shanghai.

At the beginning of the qualifying, Charles Leong took the top spot early in his 3rd lap with a lap of 2m05.060s. Daniel Lu and Cao Zhuo were the second and third, only less than 0.5s adrift. Only after one lap, Pavan Ravishankar beat Daniel Lu by half a second, edging himself to the 3rd place.

During the fierce battle for the pole, Daniel Lu dramatically crashed Xu Zixuan from Team Road to Champion in Turn 14, ruling himself out of the contention as the car has been seriously damaged. The red flag was out, and the race was suspended for about 10 minutes. Even though Daniel Lu only managed to finish 3 laps before the accident, his quickest lap was 2m05.300s, enabling him to start from 5th in the race tomorrow. Xu Zixuan will start from the 19th tomorrow.

The qualifying restarted after about 10 minutes. Charles Leong delivered a mighty lap of 2m03.853 to make sure of taking his 1st pole position in AFR in Shanghai. At the same time, Cao Zhuo and Pavan Ravishankar were fighting for the last position to start from the first row. Despite having trailed Cao Zhuo in early laps, Pavan Ravishankar beat Cao Zhuo to the 3rd place, as the latter failed to improve his lap.

It is glad to see Charles and Pavan from BlackArts Racing all achieved significant breakthroughs today. The quickest lap 2,03.853s set by Charles is also the quickest lap time of AFR in history here. Meanwhile, Pavan produced a superb performance to set the quickest 2nd time, which means that he will start from the pole position in the race for the first time in AFR.

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