Felipe Nasr took his first ever GP2 pole position in Hungary

Felipe Nasr took his first GP2 pole position in Hungary and with it a valuable four points as he looks to close the gap to Jolyon Palmer at the top of the Drivers’ Championship.

The Brazilian set two laps in the closing minutes of the session that would have been good enough for top spot as his Carlin car found the sweetspot around the twists and turns of the Hungaroring.

“The car felt really good and we definitely carried over our strong showing from last weekend and free practice this morning,” Nasr said.

“On my first set of tyres I made a small mistake and didn’t get the best lap as a result. However on the second set I knew the speed was there and that I could put the sectors together which I did and now we’re starting on pole position which feels amazing. The weekend couldn’t have started better for me; now we look ahead to continuing this through the racing this weekend.”

Caterham’s new recruit Tom Dillmann will line-up alongside Nasr on the frontrow after exploiting an empty track in the middle part of the session to leap up the table, whilst the rest of the field sat in the pits between their two new trye runs.

Arthur Pic was a surprise third for Campos, just ahead of his team-mate Kimiya Sato – although both drivers set their quickest laps whilst yellow flags were out in the first sector to recover the stranded DAMS car of Stephane Richelmi who had stopped on the pit-straight.

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Johnny Cecotto set the fifth quickest time, but will start from eighth having been handed a three-place grid penalty for causing a collision after he clashed with Palmer during Practice. His penalty promotes Stoffel Vandoorne, Palmer and Marciello all up one position.

That will be little consolation for Palmer, though, who qualifies off the frontrow for the first time in 2014 having been put on the backfoot after losing valuable track time in Practice having suffered car damage when hit by Cecotto after just four laps. The Briton will have his work cut out to stop Nasr eating into his 37 point advantage.

The GP2 Feature Race follows F1 qualifying on Saturday and you can see the action live on Sky Sports F1 from 2:35pm.

GP2 Qualifying – Hungary
1) Felipe Nasr (BRA) – Carlin – 1:28.436
2) Tom Dillmann (FRA) – Caterham Racing - +0.182
3) Arthur Pic (FRA) – Campos Racing - +0.207
4) Kimiya Sato (JPN) – Campos Racing - +0.222
5) Johnny Cecotto (VEN) – Trident - +0.273
6) Stoffel Vandoorne (BEL) – ART Grand Prix - +0.304
7) Jolyon Palmer (GBR) – DAMS - +0.355
8) Raffaele Marciello (ITA) – Racing Engineering - +0.496
9) Marco Sorensen (DEN) – MP Motorsport - +0.499
10) Stephane Richelmi (MON) – DAMS - +0.505

Selected others
22) Adrian Quaife-Hobbs (GBR) – Rapax - +1.026
23) Jon Lancaster (GBR) - Hilmer Motorsport - +1.244