Prema Racing's Pierre Gasly took pole position for Saturday's GP2 feature race in Malaysia ahead of team mate Antonio GIovinazzi.
Gasly shaded his team mate by just under a tenth with his time of 1:42.181, and the Red Bull protege was over three tenths clear of third-best Raffaele Marciello, with high tyre degradation meaning most only completed a handful of laps at a time on the newly-resurfaced track.
Early on in the session it was the ART drivers who looked set to take the top spots, with Sergey Sirotkin and then team mate Nobuharu Matsushita going fastest of all, until Gasly improved.
A crash late on in the session for Mitch Evans halted proceedings, and with just two and a half minutes left on the clock, nobody was able to improve due to tyres not reaching optimal temperatures. Giovinazzi looked like he might buck this trend and threaten his team mate's time, but a yellow flag for a spinning Matsushita at the penultimate corner scuppered those chances.
Behind the front three was the ART duo of Sirotkin and Matsushita, followed by Alex Lynn, Racing Engineering pair Norman Nato and Jordan King, with Oliver Rowland, and Artem Markelov completing the top 10. Local driver Nabil Jeffri put his arden 17th on the grid.
