First qualifying: Advantage Huisman

The BMW driver had been knocked off the top of the timesheets in the latter half of the session by Peugeot's Steve Soper but moved back to the top spot with two minutes of qualifying remaining. Huisman, who admitted to have taken it easy in the morning's free practice session, lifted his game for qualifying and managed to outpace the opposition despite a brief run up the escape road at Lisboa.

"It wasn't too bad," said Huisman. "The session seemed to start well when I went quickest but after changing the set-up from this morning I decided to go back to it because it was much better. The car was a lot more comfortable through Mandarin, where I hadn't been taking too many risks this morning, and although I had some oversteer in the final two corners of the lap it was quite nice because I could use the throttle to drive the car through."

Dutchman Tom Coronel secured the first two positions for BMW when he grabbed the second spot with less than 30 seconds of qualifying remaining. He had been outpaced by Peugeot's Steve Soper, who had briefly topped the timesheets towards the end of the session, but put in his best lap time when he switched to new tyres.

"I got a flat tyre in that session so I had to use some new tyres," said Coronel. "I also never got any clear laps because of traffic so it was quite difficult to put a good lap time in. As long as we manage to qualify near the front of the grid then we should be in with a good chance of victory because so much can happen on Sunday."

German Franz Engstler admitted to being disappointed with his fourth quickest time after a minor brush with the wall in the opening part of qualifying affected his car's set-up: "I was not particularly happy with that," he said. "On my second lap I collided with the wall and that affected the toe-in of my car. I couldn't get a good enough lap time out of it but I am hoping I can improve tomorrow."

C Nattavude continued his impressive run as he finished qualifying in fifth place in his Peugeot, ahead of German Markus Gedlich in the BMW and Japan's Mannabu Orido in the Toyota. Briton Simon Harrison, who had run quite well in the morning's free practice session, could only manage ninth after being caught out by numerous yellow flags in the session.