Following an installation lap, Sergey Sirotkin (Fortec Motorsports) took to the top of the timesheets before being dislodged by his team-mate Oliver Rowland. Having delayed his entrance, Marlon Stockinger (Lotus) went fastest at the mid-session point, with the drivers then coming in to bolt on new tyres.

The lap times duly fell in the final five minutes, with Oliver Rowland the first to duck under the Filipino’s benchmark time, followed by Will Stevens, whose best effort of 1:27.783 was good enough to give him his first Formula Renault 3.5 Series pole. Behind on the grid will be his compatriots Oliver Rowland and William Buller.

Saturday’s Formula Renault 3.5 Series race starts at 14.00.

Will Stevens: “It’s great to be on pole eventually. We’ve put in a lot of hard work over these last few weeks and I think we’ve finally find out where we were struggling, which is actually a bit frustrating because this is our last meeting of the year. All the same, it’s good to be able to show our potential and finish the year on a high. This track is very hard on the rear tyres, which is why we were doing short runs in qualifying. It’s more exciting from the drivers’ point of view, though, because you have to manage that.”