McLaren F1 junior Stoffel Vandoorne takes record-breaking GP2 pole

The Belgian, whose run of poles stretches back to the Spa 2014 round last August, had dominated free practice and carried that form into qualifying, earning the four bonus points available to extend his championship lead.

The ART driver immediately asserted himself in the session, going fastest during the first of two runs on soft-compound Pirellis, 0.148s faster than Alex Lynn's DAMS entry.

It wasn't until the final six minutes that improvements started to come on drivers' second runs, with Vandoorne consolidating his advantage by finding half-a-second to improve to a 1m29.273s.

Although Lynn did dipped under Vandoorne's first-run time, this was after the Belgian had already improved, meaning it served only to make sure of second place, 0.407s down on pole.

Lynn's DAMS team-mate Pierre Gasly was 12th after his first run, but he made a big improvement on his second attempt to go third, eight-tenths off the pace.

Russian Time driver Mitch Evans was unable to improve on his second qualifying run, but his pace on the first attempt was strong enough to give him fourth on the grid ahead of Racing Engineering's Alexander Rossi.

Daniel de Jong claimed comfortably the best qualifying position of his career with a surprise sixth place ahead of Ferrari protege Raffaele Marciello.

Bahrain sprint-race winner Rio Haryanto was eighth fastest ahead of GP2 debutant Nick Yelloly, putting in a strong performance on his first outing for Hilmer Motorsport.

Julian Leal completed the top 10 in the quicker of the two Carlin entries, with team-mate Marco Sorensen down in 18th.

Honda-backed Nobuharu Matsushita was 14th ahead of Jordan King, who briefly got into the top 10 on his second run before being shuffled back.

GP2 returnee Johnny Cecotto Jr was only 21st in the second Hilmer car.

Artem Markelov, who followed up his encouraging Bahrain pace with a decent showing in free practice, will start from the back of the grid after failing to set a time.

The Russian Time driver's Dallara ground to a halt at Turn 4 on his outlap early in the session, triggering a brief red flag to allow it to be recovered with 27 minutes remaining.

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