Piccione gives Monaco maiden pole

The former GP2 racer - who will start fourth for the sprint race - benefited from the sessions being red flagged in the final two minutes, before several other front-runners had a chance to complete their final lap.

Malaysia and New Zealand were the only other teams to get a hot lap in before Brazil's Felipe Guimaraes crashed heavily, bringing out the red flag.

It was a remarkable achievement for the Malaysian team, who did not complete a lap during the morning practice sessions due to having an engine change, and they were only able to complete one installation lap with their new powerplant five minutes before qualifying began.

Behind Piccione, Fairuz Fauzy and Earl Bamber, the next 10 cars had to rely on their first attempts for the feature race.

That left John Martin, who initially set the pace, in fourth for Australia, while the teams topping the standings - Switzerland and Ireland - will share row three.

There was more disappointment for free practice front-runners Lebanon, though. The team skipped the first part of feature race qualifying while they fixed a problem on Daniel Morad's car - but he had not completed a lap by the time of the red flag, so will start at the back.

Pos  Driver             Team            Time
 1.  Clivio Piccione    Monaco          1:27.269
 2.  Fairuz Fauzy       Malaysia        1:27.405 + 0.136
 3.  Earl Bamber        New Zealand     1:27.569 + 0.300
 4.  John Martin        Australia       1:28.439 + 1.170
 5.  Neel Jani          Switzerland     1:28.521 + 1.252
 6.  Adam Carroll       Ireland         1:28.593 + 1.324
 7.  F.Albuquerque      Portugal        1:28.773 + 1.504
 8.  Felipe Guimaraes   Brazil          1:28.878 + 1.609
 9.  J.Bleekemolen      Netherlands     1:28.926 + 1.657
10.  Danny Watts        Great Britain   1:29.092 + 1.823
11.  Nicolas Prost      France          1:29.155 + 1.886
12.  Ho-Pin Tung        China           1:29.158 + 1.889
13.  Salvador Duran     Mexico          1:29.343 + 2.074
14.  Marco Andretti     USA             1:29.487 + 2.218
15.  M.Ammermuller      Germany         1:29.565 + 2.296
16.  Adrian Zaugg       South Africa    1:29.884 + 2.615
17.  Edoardo Piscopo    Italy           1:30.063 + 2.794
18.  N.Karthikeyan      India           1:30.505 + 3.236
19.  Zahir Ali          Indonesia       No time
20.  Daniel Morad       Lebanon         No time