Roy Nissany’s Friday started with a jaunt in the Williams FW43 during Formula FP1, and ended with a career high Formula 2 finish in Qualifying – not a bad day’s work. The Trident racer says he is “very, very happy, but not surprised,” as the result was the culmination of a lot of hard work behind the scenes in the Italian garage.

Nissany was just 0.297s off the pole time, and the team will now have the opportunity to fight at the front in a Feature Race.

“A great day for us,” Nissany elated. “I started with F1 in the morning and then had a bit of a compromised Free Practice in F2, with minor issues, but we were able to come back for Qualifying.

“This is a product of very, very hard work, which is being put into this project. We couldn’t show Quali pace before and we knew that this was our weakest point. We have given all of our efforts to improve this and there is nothing better than getting your reward for hard work.

“We have been working on the car for a long time and even if we couldn’t see improvements on the monitor, we definitely had improvement internally. Behaviour, feeling, potential, so today we could put it to work. Things are starting to connect, and it was just another step of many.

“I am very excited. It is not a shame to say it gives confidence to finally show on paper that we can be there at the front. I will be keeping it calm, excited, but still focused - we are ready to go.”

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Nissany had started the day in FP1 as part of his role in the Williams Academy. He finished in P18, ahead of Ferrari’s four-time F1 World Champion Sebastian Vettel, and his former F2 rival Nicholas Latifi, posting a time of 1:22.826.

The Israeli then had just 25 minutes to swap the Williams for his Trident to take part in F2 FP. So quick was his turnaround, that Nissany was the first man out on track. Thanks to FP1, he had the benefit of an extra 90 minutes on the Monza circuit, though Nissany says it isn’t quite as simple as that.

“Actually, I believe it is quite hard to combine the two,” he said. “Yes, from one side, you get to be on track before other drivers, but the braking points are so different. The lines, the behaviour of the car, the approach, and even the physical effort that you are enduring for one and a half hours, before jumping in the F2 car is quite massive.

“In general, I would actually say it is a bit of a disadvantage for the driver to be jumping between the two cars, but somehow today, I could manage it. There was only a little bit of time between FP1, Free Practice and Qualifying, but I was able to refocus, refresh and be ready to go.”