Lapierre takes pole for France

Lapierre did not even have to go out in the last of the four, 15-minute qualifying sessions, having set his two fastest laps for his aggregate grid time in the opening two sessions.

The GP2 racer had saved his brand new sets of tyres in this morning's free practice session, and used them on his first two runs, and was nearly half a second quicker than the rest of the field.

It means that Lapierre has been on pole for both of his races in the French team, after he also took the top spot at the EuroSpeedway Lausitz.

"We felt we didn't have to go out in the final session," Lapierre said. "So we saved some good tyres for tomorrow. We have had a very good weekend so far, we were struggling at the beginning and it has come good now. "My first lap was safe, despite being on new tyres but on the second lap and my engineer told me to push very hard so I did, so it was a very good lap."

Portugal's Alvaro Parente had his best qualifying performance of the season by qualifying alongside Lapierre in second, after completing both his laps inside the 1m 18 bracket.

Parente said: "I'm happy with this second place because we were struggling in free practice. We still have to find some time with the old tyres but we improved a lot with the new tyres. We are going to keep working to catch France."

Neel Jani, recovering from being in hospital with high fever earlier this week, did a sterling job to secure third on the grid for Switzerland.

"The A1 GP car is a really tough car to drive and since I was really ill I'm quite happy with third place," Jani said. "I lost second on the very last run. I think me and the team did an ok job and we will have to improve. We will make some changes to try and catch France, who are just so quick."

Nelson Piquet Jr had Brazil's worst qualifying of the season with fourth on the grid, ahead of Robbie Kerr's Great Britain entry. Michael Devaney secured Team Ireland's best grid position of the season so far by impressing in sixth position.

Alex Yoong took Team Malaysia's finished 9th, moving up ahead of Mexico in 10th the final of the four fifteen minute sessions. That was in spite of Mexican driver Salvador Duran blocking Yoong on the former Minardi driver's fastest lap.

Australian driver Will Davison gave the home crowd something to cheer about with 12th edging out southern-hemisphere rival New Zealand, with Jonny Reid being just 0.112 seconds behind Davison over his two best laps.