PREMA's Pierre Gasly stormed to a clear pole position on Friday for Saturday's Hungarian feature race, putting in a brilliant 1:25.612 to go more than half a second clear of ART's Sergey Sirotkin in second.
The Red Bull test driver's previous lap would have been good enough for pole, be he found an improvement on his next lap to go further clear at the top of the timing screens.
The Frenchman's team-mate, Antonio Giovinazzi, starts third having only been able to manage a lap eight-tenths slower than Gasly.
The session started under hot and humid conditions with the majority of the field heading out to take advantage of the rubber laid down by the Formula 1 cars during first and second practice. However the two PREMA cars remained in their respective garages.
The times at the top tumbled as the session progressed with several drivers taking over the top spot. Firstly Oliver Rowland then Alex Lynn then Nobuharu Matsushita and finally Sirotkin. However with the majority heading back to the pits, Gasly and Giovinazzi emerged, handing the pair a largely clean circuit with which to work.
That prompted the DAMS drivers to head back out, only to finish P11 for Alex Lynn and P12 for Nicholas Latifi. Had Lynn's lap been a clean one, he may have been higher up the order.
The remainder of the field emerged for a final flying lap, but it seemed as though the best of the conditions had been and gone, leaving Gasly on pole.
Behind the top three Matsushita leads Norman Nato, Luca Ghiotto, Arthur Pic, Raffaele Marciello, Jordan King and Marvin Kirchhofer completing the top ten.
