D'Ambrosio bags pole at Sepang

It was two-by-two in morning practice when Kamui Kobayashi edged out DAMS team mate D'Ambrosio by 0.2s, while Roldan Rodriguez and Diego Nunes were third and fourth for Piquet GP.

But D'Ambrosio showed the better form of the two DAMS drivers in the afternoon, securing pole with a lap of 1m45.410s.

Incredibly, just 0.9s covered the top 22 drivers on what is a quite a long lap, while the top 10 was within 0.4s.

Nunes will share the front row with D'Ambrosio, while James Jakes had a good run to third for Super Nova, despite a spin. Kobayashi had to be content with fourth place, ahead of Javier Villa and Vitaly Petrov.

ART had a low key day with Pastor Maldonado eighth and Sakon Yamamoto only 15th. Returning to the series, Alvaro Parente took 10th for the local Meritus outfit. Bahrain sprint race winner Sergio Perez is only 18th.

Because of the changed schedule for the grand prix, the Saturday race starts at noon local time, before the first F1 practice session, rather than after qualifying as is usual.

Pos Driver                     Team             Time         Gap
 1. Jerome D'Ambrosio          DAMS             1:45.410
 2. Diego Nunes                Piquet           1:45.522  +0.112
 3. James Jakes                Super Nova       1:45.527  +0.117
 4. Kamui Kobayashi            DAMS             1:45.577  +0.167
 5. Javier Villa               Super Nova       1:45.649  +0.239
 6. Vitaly Petrov              Barwa Addax      1:45.720  +0.310
 7. Davide Valsecchi           Durango          1:45.748  +0.338
 8. Pastor Maldonado           ART              1:45.755  +0.345
 9. Roldan Rodriguez           Piquet           1:45.767  +0.357
10. Alvaro Parente             Meritus          1:45.816  +0.406
11. Yelmer Buurman             Ocean            1:45.954  +0.544
12. Davide Rigon               Trident          1:45.978  +0.568
13. Luiz Razia                 Arden            1:45.989  +0.579
14. Rodolfo Gonzalez           FMS              1:46.053  +0.643
15. Sakon Yamamoto             ART              1:46.087  +0.677
16. Giedo van der Garde        iSport           1:46.105  +0.695
17. Fabrizio Crestani          Ocean            1:46.108  +0.698
18. Sergio Perez               Barwa Addax      1:46.169  +0.759
19. Edoardo Mortara            Arden            1:46.184  +0.774
20. Michael Herck              DPR              1:46.259  +0.849
21. Hamad Al-Fardan            iSport           1:46.265  +0.855
22. Marco Bonanomi             Meritus          1:46.315  +0.905
23. Giacomo Ricci              DPR              1:46.604  +1.194
24. Ricardo Teixeira           Trident          1:47.838  +2.428
25. Kevin Nai Chia Chen        FMS              1:49.642  +4.232
26. Michael Dalle Stelle       Durango          1:49.857  +4.447