The Japanese driver looked sublime all across the three sessions beating Joao Paulo de Oliveira to pole with a time of 1m13.620s.

The Inging driver topped both Q1 and Q2 before taking pole, as the top eight in Q3 were covered by only 0.534s.

Koudai Tsukakoshi was third, 0.051s behind Brazilian de Oliveira and 0.024s ahead of fourth-placed Takuya Izawa.

Round one polesitter and winner Naoki Yamamoto finished sixth behind Tomoki Nojiri, as Yuji Kunimoto and Yuhi Sekiguchi completed the top eight.

Sekiguchi's late lap in Q2 demoted Toyota WEC driver Kazuki Nakajima to ninth in the session, which also saw Audi WEC's Andre Lotterer and former Formula 1 driver Narain Karthikeyan getting knocked out.

The German was 12th while the Indian was 14th, the latter having a brief off-track moment as they sandwiched former F1 test driver James Rossiter in 13th.

Meanwhile, McLaren's Stoffel Vandoorne suffered a big shock after finishing only 17th, thus bringing an early end to his qualifying due to a gearbox failure.

The Belgian along with Toyota WEC driver Kamui Kobayashi did only five laps in the session which saw almost every driver completing more than 10 laps.

The Japanese finished 18th, 0.012s behind the McLaren reserve, who were both pushed out after late improvements from rivals.

Qualifying Results: