Jolyon Palmer will start fourth on the grid for tomorrow's GP2 Feature Race on the legendary Monza circuit in Italy and is well placed to extend his championship lead.

Running at the front throughout today's qualifying session, Palmer's first shot at a fast lap put him third and he improved on his next run to move up to second, setting a lap time of 1m32.040s.

Pitting with 18 minutes remaining, Jolyon returned to the track with 11 minutes still to go and improved again on his next run, shaving-off three hundredths of a second.

Jolyon could have further improved his time late on, but was forced to take evasive action at the Parabolica on his final flying lap to avoid a slow Johnny Cecotto. 

With nearest championship rival Felipe Nasr starting eighth on the grid, Jolyon has an ideal opportunity to stretch his title margin in tomorrow's 30-lap race.

Jolyon commented: "It wasn't a bad qualifying to line up P4, but it could have been a lot better without hitting traffic on a good lap. If I'd put my lap together I'm sure we would have been fighting for pole, but we still can have a good race tomorrow starting fourth."

GP2 Qualifying result, Monza

1. Stoffel Vandoorne, ART GP, 1m21.707s
2. Arthur Pic, Campos, +0.219s
3. Mitch Evans, Russian Time, +0.227s
4. Jolyon Palmer, DAMS, +0.303s
5. Raffaele Marciello, Racing Engineering, +0.417s
6. Simon Trummer, Rapax, +0.430s
7. Stephane Richelmi, DAMS, +0.443s
8. Felipe Nasr, Carlin, +0.603s
9. Julian Leal, Carlin, +0.636s
10. Andre Negrao, Arden, +0.647s