Yvan Muller defeated his Citroen team-mates to claim pole position for the World Touring Car Championship’s return to Spa-Francorchamps.
Muller defeated Sebastien Loeb by 0.146 seconds around the classic Belgian circuit, while championship leader Jose Maria Lopez could only manage the third best time, albeit also within two tenths of the pace.
Hugo Valente put in an impressive performance to be best of the rest in his Chevrolet in fourth, with Gabriele Tarquini the slowest of the Q3 runners in fifth.
Tiago Monteiro was only narrowly edged out by Castrol Honda team-mate Tarquini for a place in the final segment. However, the Portuguese driver has a five-place grid penalty carried over from an incident in Moscow, and will start down in tenth for race one.
That promotes Norbert Michelisz up onto the third row in sixth, ahead of Tom Coronel, Mehdi Bennani and Gianni Morbidelli. Dusan Borkovic would have been due to start ahead of Monteiro, but will start from the back after changing the engine in his Chevrolet.
Tom Chilton was a lowly 12th ahead of Rob Huff in the best of the Ladas, while Moscow debut winner Ma Qing Hua exited in Q1 in the fourth Citroen.