Jolyon Palmer enjoyed a promising opening to his maiden GP2 Asia campaign, finishing within 0.9s of the ultimate pace in practice before qualifying 18th for the first race - little more than one second off polesitter Romain Grosjean.

Running at the Yas Marina circuit has proved incredibly close throughout testing, and the opening day of running was no exception as just over two seconds covered the entire 26 car grid in practice.

Jolyon, making his competitive GP2 bow, impressed by rising through the ranks and beating a host of more experienced rivals to finish 14th overall - 0.952s behind the ultimate pace.

Qualifying proved to be even more competitive, with former F1 driver Romain Grosjean in scintillating form as he blitzed to a benchmark time of 1:36.041s - more than four tenths of a second clear of the field.

Palmer's best, a 1:37.305s, was within nine tenths of a second of Jules Bianchi in second, and less than six tenths behind team-mate and series returnee Josef Kral.

A philosophical Jolyon reflected: "Practice was difficult this morning. The track has changed since we tested so I had to find my feet again. It wasn't the end of the world to be 14^th, but I hoped to build on that during qualifying.

"Things didn't go as well as I'd expected, though, because I was struggling with the brakes and couldn't conjure a good lap. We'll now work hard to improve the car for the race and hopefully move forward from there."

For full results click here.

The first race will take place at 12.55 GMT time tomorrow (Friday).