Piquet delighted with 'lucky' pole

Piquet found a traffic-free lap on his second set of slick tyres and produced a brilliant effort to head the field by almost half a second. It was his second pole in three races and adds a further two points to his championship lead.

"This time I got lucky," he said. "We didn't do anything different with the strategy, we just had a lap where we didn't hit any traffic."

Rising oil temperatures brought Piquet's free practice to an early close and necessitated an engine change. Yet in spite of this he was able to steal a clear advantage in a session where 20 driver were covered by a second.

"After this morning I was just hoping for a top six, knowing that I could fight back from there," he said. "So to get pole is really just perfect. I'm going to take a calm approach to the race and try to stay out of trouble on the first lap.

"If I can win it, that's great, but if not I'll take a podium. It's all about points, points, points for the championship at the moment."