Vitaly Petrov has kept his championship hopes alive with a strong drive in difficult conditions during this afternoon's qualifying session to claim pole for tomorrow's race, ahead of Giedo van der Garde and points leader Nico Hulkenberg.

The Russian, who has been feeling poorly after picking up an infection on his arm, stopped the clock with a time of 1:30.007, four tenths faster than his rivals, to pick up the two points on offer and close the gap to his German rival to 25 points.

Petrov led the field out of the pits at the start of the session and sat at the top of the timesheets for the remaining 30 minutes, with his rivals unable to get close: the Russian even set the second and third fastest laps on his second set of tyres and was comfortable enough to get out of the car well before the end of the session.

Sergio Perez set an impressive fourth quickest time, just ahead of Lucas di Grassi (who has a ten grid place penalty to serve after race two at Spa), Pastor Maldonado, this morning's fastest driver Roldan Rodriguez (who ran wide at Parabolica and was unable to improve thereafter) and Diego Nunes.

With 15 drivers within a second of the pole winning time, tomorrow's race promises to be as hot as the conditions, but all eyes will be on Petrov to see if he can take more points out of Hulkenberg's championship lead and take the fight down to the wire in Portugal.