Jolyon Palmer will start from eighth place for tomorrow's GP2 Feature Race in Valencia following today's (Friday) closely fought qualifying session, which saw the top 14 drivers lap inside one second.

The 21-year-old's first flying lap on the soft tyres proved to be his best, initially putting him fourth, the same place he finished in practice. On his next lap he set an overall best time in the first sector, but was unable to keep the time up and elected to pit for fresh tyres, having fallen to seventh fastest.

Palmer then retook to the track on the supersoft tyres with nine minutes remaining on the clock but, as the rest of the field found, the new rubber did not give the expected speed advantage and he had to settle for eighth place on the grid.

Lotus GP's James Calado secured pole position by 0.007 seconds from Felipe Nasr in the DAMS with Esteban Gutierrez third, also driving for Lotus GP.

Speaking afterwards Jolyon said: "It wasn't a bad session but P8 is slightly disappointing after such a promising practice. We just couldn't get anything out of the option tyres so I needed up doing my best time on the harder ones again. Still for tomorrow we have to push and try and make places and get some good points."

The GP2 Feature race takes place at 14.40pm UK time tomorrow (Saturday) with full coverage and live timing available on Jolyon's official website.

GP2 Valencia, qualifying results:

1. J Calado, Lotus GP, 1:47.342s
2. F Nasr, DAMS, +0.007s
3. E Gutierrez, Lotus GP, +0.102s
4. D Valsecchi, DAMS, +0.116s
5. G VD Garde, Caterham, +0.201s
6. M Chilton, Carlin, +0.332s
7. F Leimer, Racing, +0.459s
8. J Palmer, iSport, +0.459s
9. M Ericsson, iSport, +0.630s
10. R Haryanto, Carlin, +0.654s