PREMA Racing didn’t meet their own very high standards in qualifying for the FIA Formula 2 Championship in Bahrain, with two drivers out of the top five.

For most teams, this would be a good result, for PREMA the Team and Driver Champions for the past two years this could be considered a slow start. A testament to the team’s quality and standing of course.

Jehan Daruvala will start the Feature Race from seventh, which puts him fourth on the grid for Saturday’s reverse grid Sprint Race.

The Indian fought back in his final lap of qualifying to get back into the top-10 to show more of the potential he showed in the series last year for his first race for PREMA Racing.

Daruvala said: “It wasn’t a too bad qualy overall to start with, I made a bit of a mistake in the first lap of my second run. We definitely had the potential to be in the top 3.

“However, it is what it is. We have good grid positions for both races to go and score as many points as we can.”

Meanwhile, Dennis Hauger suffered from inexperience during his first qualifying run of the series after heading up from Formula 3.

After winning the F3 series last year and showing some good potential while trying to learn the ropes in F2, the Red Bull Junior couldn’t put it all together and was out of the top ten.

Hauger said: “Not the best qualifying. I would have been at least into the top-10 in the last push if I didn’t make a couple of mistakes that put me in a worse position for the weekend in terms of the reverse grid.

“It is a bit of a shame. I think I was just a few hundreds away from Jehan before that, so at least the driving itself was not looking too bad in that sense.

“Now we have to shape up and focus on the races where a lot of things can happen. The race pace was looking good in testing, we need to keep our head down and focus on that.”

The two PREMA Racing drivers will focus on maximising their races to get the best results for the rest of the weekend.