European F3 Red Bull Ring: Schumacher takes another pole, Ticktum sixth

Schumacher, who won all three races last time out at the Nurburgring and trails championship leader Dan Ticktum by just three points, lapped an eye-opening 0.247 seconds quicker than Prema Powerteam stablemate Robert Shwartzman.

The destiny of pole never looked in doubt - Schumacher topped both free-practice sessions earlier in the day and in qualifying he rarely looked threatened.

In turn, Shwartzman continued his Nurburgring form, where he was second in all three races, to claim the other front-row spot.

Shwartzman's fellow Ferrari junior Marcus Armstrong eschewed his usual smooth-driving approach, the Kiwi looking spectacular as he muscled his car around the Austrian asphalt to complete a Prema 1-2-3.

If Armstrong's driving was notable, Jehan Daruvala completely ragged his Carlin machine to fourth position - the Force India protege completely trounced his team-mates, the best of whom was Austrian Ferdinand Habsburg in 12th place.

Daruvala and Armstrong actually set the second and third-quickest times of the session, but both efforts were disallowed for breaching track limits at the fast Turn 9 right-hander, promoting Shwartzman two places from fourth to second.

Motopark's Juri Vips was the closest challenger to Schumacher in free practice, but the Estonian lost four tenths when it mattered on his way to fifth, pipping team-mate Ticktum's Red Bull-liveried machine by 0.004 seconds.

Another Motopark driver, Jonathan Aberdein, was close at hand too as he took seventh place.

Hitech GP's Enaam Ahmed set a purple time in the first sector on the very final lap, but messed up the final corner and got badly out of shape on the exit - he improved to move up to eighth, but had he matched his best final sector he would have qualified fifth.

Fabio Scherer was ninth for Motopark, with Prema's Ralf Aron rounding out the top 10.

But Aron will have to start the opening race from 20th, thanks to a 10-place grid penalty for an engine change after a 'mechanical failure' was found on his Mercedes powerplant in the build-up to the weekend.

That elevates Prema team-mate Guan Yu Zhou, whose form has dipped of late, to the final top-10 spot on the grid.

Julian Hanses - who has missed the previous three rounds after splitting from Ma-con - rejoined the field in the Carlin entry vacated by Devlin DeFrancesco following the opening two events. The German was 22nd of the 23 competitors.

Qualifying result