Parente grabs maiden pole at Spa

In far sunnier and conditions than those that the field faced in practice this morning, Parente produced a 1m54.970s lap to dislodge Lucas di Grassi from the top spot by just 0.080s with just 20 seconds of the session remaining.

Several quick drivers were still out on the track, but when Roldan Rodriguez stopped on the circuit and brought out the yellows a few moments later, any hopes of bettering Parente's time were dashed and the Portguese driver's place at the top was secured.

Points leader Nico Hulkenberg will start from third, alongside iSport's Diego Nunes, who did an outstanding job to record his best-ever qualifying result.

Hulkenberg's main title rival Vitaly Petrov could manage no better than fifth, with Karun Chandhok to join him on the front row.

The session was one of the most competitive of the season and, with the top 17 cars covered by just one second, a couple of tenths shaved off lap times were translating into gains of three or four rows on the grid.

Yet despite the pressure, the afternoon was relatively incident-free, with Davide Rigon providing the only drama when he forced the session to be briefly red-flagged after spinning and stalling at the Bus Stop.

Pos Driver                 Team                        Time
 1. Alvaro Parente         Ocean                  1m54.970s
 2. Lucas di Grassi        Racing Engineering     1m55.050s
 3. Nico Hulkenberg        ART                    1m55.102s
 4. Diego Nunes            iSport                 1m55.150s
 5. Vitaly Petrov          Barwa Addax            1m55.152s
 6. Karun Chandhok         Ocean                  1m55.170s
 7. Sergio Perez           Arden                  1m55.210s
 8. Roldan Rodriguez       Piquet                 1m55.255s
 9. Pastor Maldonado       ART                    1m55.462s
10. Kamui Kobayashi        DAMS                   1m55.482s
11. Dani Clos              Racing Engineering     1m55.517s
12. Giedo van der Garde    iSport                 1m55.560s
13. Javier Villa           Super Nova             1m55.785s
14. Davide Rigon           Trident                1m55.806s
15. Jerome d'Ambrosio      DAMS                   1m55.822s
16. Michael Herck          DPR                    1m55.858s
17. Davide Valsecchi       Barwa Addax            1m55.928s
18. Luca Filippi           Super Nova             1m56.061s
19. Alberto Valerio        Piquet                 1m56.063s
20  Edoardo Mortara        Arden                  1m56.285s
21. Stefano Coletti        Durango                1m56.634s
22. Ricardo Teixeira       Trident                1m57.688s
23. Nelson Panciatici      Durango                1m57.792s
24. Franck Perera          DPR                    2m24.927s