The Mercedes driver hung on against the challenges of Rene Rast and Sebastien Buemi to clinch his second series pole by just 0.059s.

After topping the group stage, Buemi was last to run in the top-six battle; he was a fractional 0.002s behind in sector one and then 0.1s off in the second split to miss first place.

Despite Rene Rast forcing a small mistake on entry of Turn 7 to run wide at the expense of 0.2s, he scored his best FE start in third place - exceeding his previous day’s effort by one spot.

Vandoorne’s teammate Nyck de Vries, the third driver to head out, had run quickest in the session before the late laps relegated him to a fourth-place start.

Edoardo Mortara for Venturi Racing was first to set a time in superpole but a conservative and unremarkable lap left him prey, with

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