Piquet closes points gap with pole

The two bonus points the Piquet Sports driver picked up for pole means he is now just eight behind series leader Lewis Hamilton with only tomorrow's feature race and Sunday's sprint left to run.

Piquet's hopes were further boosted by a great late qualifying effort from Giorgio Pantano, who nicked the second front row slot from Hamilton with just minutes of the half hour session remaining.

Hamilton's chance of fighting back was scuppered by Adrian Valles, who had a major shunt at the Parabolica, bringing out waved yellows with just over 90 seconds left on the clock.

This means Hamilton will line up directly behind Piquet tomorrow.

Adam Carroll will start fourth, while Franck Perera took fifth for DAMS.

Alex Premat gave his hopes of keeping third in the standings a shot in the arm with sixth ahead of an impressive Luca Filippi in easily his best showing to date for BCN.

Qualifying times

Pos  Driver           Team                      Time
 1.  N. Piquet Jr.    Piquet Sports         1:30.161
 2.  G. Pantano       FMS International     1:30.390  + 0.229
 3.  L. Hamilton      ART Grand Prix        1:30.488  + 0.327
 4.  A. Carroll       Racing Engineering    1:30.789  + 0.628
 5.  F. Perera        DAMS                  1:30.951  + 0.790
 6.  A. Premat        ART Grand Prix        1:31.031  + 0.870
 7.  L. Filippi       BCN Competicion       1:31.071  + 0.910
 8.  E. Viso          iSport International  1:31.162  + 1.001
 9.  M. Ammermueller  Arden International   1:31.212  + 1.051
10.  A. Valles        Campos Racing         1:31.288  + 1.127
11.  T. Glock         iSport International  1:31.302  + 1.141
12.  G. Bruni         Trident Racing        1:31.357  + 1.196
13.  F. Porteiro      Campos Racing         1:31.358  + 1.197
14.  A. Zuber         Trident Racing        1:31.453  + 1.292
15.  J. Lopez         Super Nova            1:31.479  + 1.318
16.  C. Piccione      DPR                   1:31.510  + 1.349
17.  A. Negrao        Piquet Sports         1:31.664  + 1.503
18.  S. Hernandez     Durango               1:31.685  + 1.524
19.  N. Lapierre      Arden International   1:31.821  + 1.660
20.  F. Monfardini    DAMS                  1:31.882  + 1.721
21.  H. Yoshimoto     BCN Competicion       1:31.888  + 1.727
22.  L. Di Grassi     Durango               1:31.934  + 1.773
23.  J. Villa         Racing Engineering    1:32.195  + 2.034
24.  V. Petrov        DPR                   1:32.351  + 2.190
25.  F. Fauzy         Super Nova            1:32.584  + 2.423
26.  J. Tahinci       FMS International     1:33.337  + 3.176