Sergio Jimenez stormed to pole position for the penultimate round of the inaugural season of the Jaguar I-PACE eTROPHY, beating Katherine Legge to the fastest time in New York.
Jimenez set the pace early on in the 30-minute classification session, however, after making contact with the wall was relegated to the pit lane, picking up a puncture as a result of the contact.
This allowed Caca Bueno to creep into contention, the five-time Stock Car Brasil champion improving to beat his team-mate to provisional pole by 0.081s before continuing to improve his lap time as the session advanced.
Returning to the track, Jimenez then shot to the top spot, setting a 1m 28.622s lap before again improving by 0.411s to strengthen his position at the top of the timesheets.
Jimenez's position, however, was far from secure, with Rahal Letterman Lanigan Racing's Bryan Sellers improving on his final run of the session before crashing into the barriers, breaking both his right front and right rear suspension with this leading to a red flag.
With one minute left on the clock, the session was not resumed meaning that Jimenez claimed his second pole position of the season while one bonus point ensures that he has extended his lead at the top of the Pro Drivers' Championship to seven points.
Katherine Legge emerged as the second-fastest runner, however, will start the penultimate race of the season from sixth on the grid as a result of a five-place grid penalty following an incident with Bandar Alesayi in May's Berlin round.
Bueno ended qualifying as the third fastest driver while Simon Evans was fourth, 0.450s adrift of Jimenez's pace. Sellers emerged as the slowest Pro driver although it is uncertain if the American racer will contest the penultimate race of the season due to the damage on his car.
In Pro-Am, Bandar Alesayi beat Team China Racing's Yaqi Zhang to pole position with the championship rivals qualifying in sixth and seventh overall while Ahmed Bin-Khanen followed in the second Saudi entry to secure eighth.
Ziyi Zhang was ninth while VIP driver Mark Hacking was the slowest runner of the session, qualifying in 10th place.
After crashing in practice, Celia Martin was unable to contest qualifying for the ninth round of the season while the absence of TWR Techeetah means that the grid is reduced to 11 cars for the season finale.
