Maldonado grabs pole in Barcelona

Maldonado was already in the pits and looking forward to celebrating a dominant pole when Super Nova's Alvaro Parente suddenly produced a flyer that was quicker than the Venezuelan in sectors one and two - only for him to lose four-tenths in the final section.

Still, Parente's lap was good enough for second, just under two-tenths slower than the pole time. Practice pacesetter Andi Zuber will start third for the Piquet Sports squad, although his best effort was some six-tenths slower than his team-mate.

Bruno Senna will start fourth, but he ruined his chances of improving on that when he spun into the gravel on the exit of Turn 2 before his final run. He will start ahead of Giorgio Pantano, who set the early pace for Racing Engineering, and Adrian Valles (FMS).

Karun Chandhok produced some heroics in the second iSport car to take seventh in a car that team boss Paul Jackson admitted "wasn't 100 per cent" after his practice shunt this morning. Vitaly Petrov will start eighth for Campos, ahead of Javier Villa (Racing Engineering) and Mike Conway (Trident).

The session was red-flagged 10 minutes in when Sebastien Buemi suffered a huge crash at Turn 9. He was forced to avoid a dawdling BCN car by taking to the kerb on the high-speed exit, but he hit a bump and spun across the track into the tyrewall. His Arden car was briefly flicked up onto two wheels, before landing heavily. He will start 20th tomorrow.

In other incidents, GP2 Asia champion Romain Grosjean suffered a spectacular engine failure, while his ART Grand Prix team-mate Luca Filippi also joined him outside the top 10 after a surprising lack of pace.

Alberto Valerio (Durango) and Kamui Kobayashi (DAMS) got involved in a post-session spat that involved the Brazilian swerving at him and repeatedly waving his middle finger in Kamui's general direction as they returned to the pits.

Pos Driver              Team                 Time      Gap    Laps
 1. Pastor Maldonado    Piquet Sports        1:27.547           15
 2. Alvaro Parente      Super Nova           1:27.705  +0.158   16
 3. Andi Zuber          Piquet Sports        1:28.155  +0.608   15
 4. Bruno Senna         iSport               1:28.273  +0.726   10
 5. Giorgio Pantano     Racing Engineering   1:28.290  +0.743   15
 6. Adrian Valles       FMS                  1:28.323  +0.776   15
 7. Karun Chandhok      iSport               1:28.385  +0.838   15
 8. Vitaly Petrov       Campos               1:28.423  +0.876   17
 9. Javier Villa        Racing Engineering   1:28.562  +1.015   15
10. Mike Conway         Trident              1:28.622  +1.075   15
11. Romain Grosjean     ART                  1:28.684  +1.137   14
12. Davide Valsecchi    Durango              1:28.713  +1.166   17
13. Kamui Kobayashi     DAMS                 1:28.799  +1.252   16
14. Luca Filippi        ART                  1:28.868  +1.321   15
15. Ben Hanley          Campos               1:28.889  +1.342   14
16. Ho-Pin Tung         Trident              1:28.937  +1.390   16
17. Alberto Valerio     Durango              1:29.338  +1.791   17
18. Yelmer Buurman      Arden                1:29.339  +1.792   18
19. Christian Bakkerud  Super Nova           1:29.394  +1.847   16
20. Sebastien Buemi     Arden                1:29.478  +1.931    5
21. Milos Pavlovic      BCN                  1:29.618  +2.071   12
22. Jerome D'Ambrosio   DAMS                 1:29.628  +2.081   17
23. Paolo Nocera        BCN                  1:29.708  +2.161   15
24. Roldan Rodriguez    FMS                  1:29.762  +2.215   16
25. Diego Nunes         DPR                  1:30.343  +2.796   11
26. Giacomo Ricci       DPR                  1:30.443  +2.896   13