Will Taylor took pole position ahead of the Chinese eV-Prix to put himself just 2 points off the lead of the championship, but it was only after a close battle which saw the top 4 drivers split by only 2 tenths. The Briton beat his teammate Oleksandr Zozulya, who is also marking himself out as a title contender, while Kip Maxwell took 3rd, just 11 hundredths behind Taylor. Current title leader Felipe Cesar took 4th, beating last race winner Brock Kidd to 5th.
The two Downton cars seemed the fastest at the start of the 30 minute session, though surprisingly it was Maxwell who had the advantage over Kidd, while the two Jaguars struggled. At Maserati, Ryota Yoshida seemed to have some pace as he set times closer to his teammate and the front than usual. As the session went on, Taylor and Zozulya began to gain more confidence and went faster and faster, cocumilating in them hitting the front in the last few moments. A mistake from Maxwell cost him any chance of taking pole while Cesar had a bit of a scruffy lap as well. Despite both of their suboptimal laps, they were still well ahead of Kidd and Yoshida who couldn't keep up with the rest when the lap times went down. They were split by just one thousandth in 5th and 6th, with Alexander McLaughlin another thousandth behind in 7th. The New Zealander was unable to challenge towards the front places but some solid laps meant he would start best of the rest. He was run close by Steven Kasami though - the Arrow car was able to carry a lot of speed through the chicanes and the Swiss did well to take 8th. Despite the top 8 being covered by just half a second, only two other drivers were within a second of Taylor. Otso Toivonen achieved Highwind's best qualifying result so far with 9th, but the big surprise was Rodrigo Sanchez in 10th. The Mexican was languishing towards the back for most of the session, similar to the first 3 races, but a brilliant last lap saw him shoot up to 10th, by far Nakley's best qualifying position of the season, as they look to open their points haul. The most noticeable absentees from the top 10 were Renault, who after starring in Macau with Aron Einarrson, struggled on the many straights of China and slumped to 14th and 20th. Porsche also had a disappointing qualifying again, with Sebastian Bergkvist in 13th the highest placed of the two. Elsewhere, Judson Sikes put his Lada just outside the top 10 but Robert Steffanson had a fall from his great weekend last time out, struggling to 21st. Tesla's Jochem van Snelheid also failed to get a good lap in, placing a disappointing 18th, as did Steffen Rosenberg in 15th who was well off his teammate's lap time. See below for full qualifying results:
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