Barber: Ed Jones wins Indy Lights pole

Ed Jones gets the check

Carlin’s Ed Jones took his first Indy Lights pole position of the season this morning at a dry and sunny Barber Motorsport Park. Jones, who had topped yesterday’s final practice session claimed the top spot this morning with a lap 0.17 seconds fastest than the second quickest man. Team mate Felix Serralles was left disappointed with his qualifying position of 12th however, after being second fastest yesterday and having his fastest lap deleted this morning. Neil Alberico will also be frustrated with 14th today after showing strong pace in practice on Friday.

Friday’s practice sessions finished strongly for the Carlin trio, with all three in the top four on the timing screens. Jones was quickest of all just ahead of Serralles with Alberico fourth.

After rain storms yesterday, conditions were much brighter this morning as the IndyLights action got underway bright and early at 8am. After initially going out on used rubber the Carlin men soon made the change to new Cooper tyres. Jones promptly made the most of the grip and went second fastest with Serralles also competitive in fourth and Alberico 15th. Jones saved his best lap until there was just over three minutes left on the clock however, taking provisional pole position.

As the clock ticked down no driver was able to better Jones’ time, with the Carlin man taking his first pole position of 2016. Serralles was 12th and Alberico 14th.

Speaking about his session, pole man Jones said, “We knew qualifying would be very important, with the history of the race and overtaking being quite challenging here. We worked hard yesterday and made some big improvements in FP2 and again made a step forward for qualifying. It was always going to be about who really nailed a lap when it mattered and I managed to put that together this morning. We put new tyres on in practice yesterday, and I think that gave us a good reference and baseline for how the car would handle today in qualifying, which helped us."

The first race of the weekend gets underway later today at 12pm local time.

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