Jolyon Palmer will start Saturday’s GP2 Series race from pole position after topping a disrupted Singapore qualifying session, ahead of Carlin teammate Felipe Nasr.

In the only night-time running for the series all weekend, Palmer lapped the Marina Bay track in 1m53.600s, just over a quarter of a second faster than Nasr could manage.

Championship leader Fabio Leimer will start third for Racing Engineering. He had provisional pole halfway through the session, but had nothing to respond to the Carlin cars despite a brave late effort.

Although Leimer missed out on the four points for pole, he will be delighted to be seven places ahead of main title rival Sam Bird, who could only manage 10th fastest time in his Russian Time machine.

Bird was plagued by Johnny Cecotto Jr. in his efforts at the end of the session, as the Venezuelan appeared to get in his way on numerous occasions.

The session was disrupted by a number of incidents, the first being Mitch Evans piling into the Tecpro barrier at Turn 10 when he locked up and went off in his Arden car. He will need dispensation to start as he had failed to set a representative lap time.

Just after James Calado clipped a wall, his ART team-mate Daniel Abt stopped trackside with no power. Then series newcomer Gianmarco Raimondo shunted at the Marina Bay grandstand bend, smashing his Trident car’s right-front corner against the barrier. That caused a red flag with 14 minutes to go.

After the mayhem was cleared, Alexander Rossi qualified fourth for Caterham, ahead of Stephane Richelmi, Tom Dillmann (who was lucky to rejoin after overshooting a corner), Sergio Canamasas and Calado.

Erstwhile points leader Stefano Coletti, now third in the standings, was 11th fastest.

Pos  Driver               Team                Time       Gap 1.  Jolyon Palmer        Carlin              1m53.600s 2.  Felipe Nasr          Carlin              1m53.852s  +0.252s 3.  Fabio Leimer         Racing Engineering  1m53.870s  +0.270s 4.  Alexander Rossi      Caterham            1m54.285s  +0.685s 5.  Stephane Richelmi    DAMS                1m54.403s  +0.803s 6.  Tom Dillmann         Russian Time        1m54.695s  +1.095s 7.  Sergio Canamasas     Caterham            1m54.812s  +1.212s 8.  James Calado         ART                 1m54.822s  +1.222s 9.  Marcus Ericsson      DAMS                1m54.987s  +1.387s10.  Sam Bird             Russian Time        1m55.163s  +1.563s11.  Stefano Coletti      Rapax               1m55.251s  +1.651s12.  Julian Leal          Racing Engineering  1m55.268s  +1.668s13.  Nathanael Berthon    Trident             1m55.567s  +1.967s14.  Johnny Cecotto Jr    Arden               1m55.683s  +2.083s15.  Dani Clos            MP                  1m55.784s  +2.184s16.  Rene Binder          Lazarus             1m55.880s  +2.280s17.  Daniel Abt           ART                 1m56.048s  +2.448s18.  Adrian Quaife-Hobbs  Hilmer              1m56.057s  +2.457s19.  Jake Rosenzweig      Addax               1m56.114s  +2.514s20.  Jon Lancaster        Hilmer              1m56.210s  +2.610s21.  Vittorio Ghirelli    Lazarus             1m56.333s  +2.733s22.  Rio Haryanto         Addax               1m56.753s  +3.153s23.  Simon Trummer        Rapax               1m57.153s  +3.553s24.  Daniel de Jong       MP                  1m57.560s  +3.960s25.  Gianmarco Raimondo   Trident             1m57.837s  +4.237s26.  Mitch Evans          Arden               2m29.069s  +35.469s