Jolyon Palmer powered to a career-best qualifying result during today's (Friday) GP2 qualifying session in Abu Dhabi, and will start from fifth on the grid for Saturday's Feature Race on his debut with the Addax team.

The 20-year-old showed excellent pace throughout the closely-fought session to record a best time of 1:49.697s - a mere 0.334s off Fabio Leimer on pole.

At the halfway point, Palmer was running an impressive P4 as he and the rest of the field began to pit for fresh Pirelli tyres. The Brit looked to be on course to go even quicker until the session was briefly halted following a red flag caused by a spin by Esteban Gutierrez.

The session restarted but few improvements were made and Jolyon maintained his fifth-place spot - the highest-placed Brit in the field.

Leimer will start on pole for tomorrow's 31-lap race with Dani Clos in second and Josef Kral in third. Palmer's team-mate Jake Rosenzweig finished in 18th.

Speaking afterwards Jolyon said: "That was a very good session. P5 is my best qualifying yet and it could easily have been P2 but I ran wide coming out of the last corner and I had to back out of the throttle. I was also improving it on my second set of tyres but hit traffic in the last sector. Still, I am happy to be at the front and now we will look at the strategy for tomorrow's race."

Jolyon is next on track at 11:00 local time (07:00 GMT) tomorrow (Saturday) for the GP2 Feature race with full coverage on his official website and Facebook page.

Abu Dhabi, GP2 Finals qualifying results:

1. F Leimer, Racing, 1:49.363s
2. D Clos, Rapax, +0.207s
3. J Kral, Arden, +0.249s
4. L Razia, AirAsia, +0.286s
5. J Palmer, Addax, +0.334s
6. M Chilton, Carlin, +0.374s
7. K Ceccon, Scuderia, +0.388s
8. E Gutierrez, ART, +0.459s
9. T Dillmann, iSport, +0.707s
10. S Coletti, Scuderia, +0.707s