Nathaniel Powers has taken pole position for the Malaysian V-Prix after a brilliant final lap pipped Enrique Ruiz to the top spot, in a session pair dominated. From their opening laps the two traded the fastest time, with less than a tenth separating them at the flag, but over two tenths advantage over a tightly packed field. Q1Practice indicated that both AMR and Arrow may avoid the disappointment of failing to make the race with either car that they suffered in Japan, but as the heat intensified in qualifying neither team could quite keep up the pace. Karl Beckenbauer topped the session for Westwood - just 0.044 ahead of Nikolai Milkovich - with Tumo Kinnumen a further tenth back, and quicker than Puccio Giodano by just one thousandth of a second. That therefore meant the two Westwood's and Cheema's would progress to Q2, with Arrow and AMR once again knocked out. Finn Schnyder got closest for the Australia outfit - a tenth and a half from progressing - while Rodolfo de la Fuente and Dmytro Kovalenko were a further tenth back. Yakumi Takahashi struggled to put a clean lap together, and ended up some eight tenths off the pace. See below for full Q1 classification: Q2No-one was keen to head out immediately in Q2 - knowing that the cooler temperatures later in the session would suit the cars and tyres better - but eventually the field trickled out, with the Ingram of James Vasquez leading the way. The first round of banker laps saw Ruiz go to the top from Powers, with Zvironas slotting in a fine third for Ocelot - albeit some three tenths away from the top two - ahead of Klaas van Snelheid and Elroy Wagner. As the session ran on times improved considerably and the order continuously shuffled, but no-one troubled the top two - as Ruiz and Powers traded pole between them five times. Eventually, with his final lap of the session - having just seen Ruiz push the benchmark by a further three hundredths - Powers put together a scintillating lap to take pole by just under a tenth. Will Hoskins ended the session third ahead of Elroy Wagner, his team mate Felix Perez and Zvironas - who held on to a fantastic sixth place start on a day when his team mate Hunter Ryan struggled with hooking a lap up and avoiding traffic, and ended up a miserable seventeenth. He was far from alone, as various drivers complained of being held up and unable to put together a full lap. Amongst them van Snelheid and Adrien Simon - who line up on the fourth row together ahead of the two Ingram's who complete the top ten - Allar Kangur in eleventh, Thierry Xylander in nineteenth and Enzo Domenicalli and Marcus Thunder, who start together on the final row of the grid, but some six tenths behind anyone else. See below for full Q2 classification, and grid for the race:
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