Yvan Muller narrowly defeated Jose Maria Lopez to claim World Touring Car Championship pole position at the Hungaroring in another Citroen lock-out of the top three.
Honda driver Gabriele Tarquini threatened to break the French marque’s stranglehold after topping Q2, but his Q3 lap was poor and he finished fifth.
That left Muller top of the Q3 times, 0.034 seconds ahead of championship leader Lopez. Sebastien Loeb was 0.386s slower than Muller in third.
Tiago Monteiro was within half a second of the pace in fourth in his Honda, ahead of team-mate Tarquini.
Mehdi Bennani narrowly missed out on a Q3 place in his Civic, taking sixth ahead of the Chevrolet quartet of Tom Chilton, Tom Coronel, Gianni Morbidelli and Hugo Valente. Dusan Borkovic had been tenth – and thus on reverse grid pole for race two – but had his times deleted for failing a ride height test, promoting his Campos Racing team-mate Valente.
Local hero Norbert Michelisz had a disappointing qualifying. He will line up 11th for both races after failing to set a time in Q2 due to a steering failure.
British drivers Rob Huff and James Thompson will start 12th and 13th respectively in their Ladas after narrowly missing out on Q2.