Renault junior Caio Collet will start the season-opening Toyota Racing Series race from pole at Highlands Motorsport Park, despite not improving on his final lap.
Collet spent much of the 15-minute session lurking towards the top of the times, before overhauling reigning series champion Liam Lawson with three minutes to spare.
After a slow preparation lap, followed by a fast one that was not quite as fast as his session-best 1m28.105s, Collet was able to hold onto the top spot.
M2 Competition?s Lawson came close with his final run but fell just shy by 0.069s. This marks the first pole for MTEC – which has a new engineering partnerhsip with Collet’s Formula Renault Eurocup squad R-ace GP – since 2015.
Lirim Zendeli was almost half a second shy of the frontrunners by the finish after the Giles Motorsport runner was top of the timesheets towards the middle of the session.
Team-mate, and early session leader, Gregoire Saucy rounded out the top five, with Igor Fraga (M2) just fractions behind Zendeli in fourth.
Honda protege Yuki Tsunoda had a somewhat anonymous run to sixth, ahead of the top Kiwi Motorsport driver Franco Colapinto.
Petr Ptacek, Jackson Walls and Oliver Rasmussen round out the top 10.
Three competitors failed to set a time. Amaury Cordeel and Jose Blanco-Chock missed out after a big practice crash on Friday, while Lucas Petersson had an incident early in the session.
Qualifying results
| Pos | Name | Team | Time |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Caio Collet | MTEC by R-ace GP | 1m28.105s |
| 2 | Liam Lawson | M2 Competition | +0.069s |
| 3 | Lirim Zendeli | Giles Motorsport | +0.495s |
| 4 | Igor Fraga | M2 Competition | +0.499s |
| 5 | Gregoire Saucy | Giles Motorsport | +0.560s |
| 6 | Yuki Tsunoda | M2 Competition | +0.592s |
| 7 | Franco Colapinto | Kiwi Motorsport | +0.598s |
| 8 | Petr Ptacek | MTEC by R-ace GP | +0.976s |
| 9 | Jackson Walls | MTEC by R-ace GP | +1.329s |
| 10 | Oliver Rasmussen | MTEC by R-ace GP | +1.552s |
| 11 | Emilien Denner | M2 Competition | +1.824s |
| 12 | Rui Andrade | M2 Competition | +1.852s |
| 13 | Spike Kohlbecker | Kiwi Motorsport | +2.140s |
| 14 | Henning Enqvist | Giles Motorsport | +2.298s |
| 15 | Axel Gnos | Kiwi Motorsport | +3.196s |
| 16 | Chelsea Herbert | Giles Motorsport | +3.622s |
| 17 | Ido Cohen | M2 Competition | +4.023s |
| 18 | Amaury Cordeel | Kiwi Motorsport | no time |
| 19 | Jose Blanco-Chock | Kiwi Motorsport | no time |
| 20 | Lucas Petersson | MTEC by R-ace GP | no time |