Jake Dennis reclaimed the lead in the Formula E standings by grabbing his first pole position of the 2022-23 season at Portland, beating Sacha Fenestrac in the final.
On his team’s home turf, Andretti driver Dennis set a lap of 1m08.931s in the pole shootout to beat rival Nissan Fenestraz by just 0.079s.
That gives him three bonus points, which puts him two points clear of Pascal Wehrlein at the top of the standings for Saturday’s race.
Fenestrac had a better start to the lap than the two finalists, having been half a tenth down after sector two, but a poor final sector allowed Dennis to regain lost ground and take advantage for the first time since last year’s London E-Prix.
On the second row of the grid will be Fenestraz’s Nissan teammate Norman Nato and McLaren’s Rene Rast.
After seeing off Maximilian Gunther in the quarter-finals, Fenestrac faced Nato in the first of the semi-finals, but managed to reach the final with the first sub-1m09s effort of the weekend, 1m08.920s, beating Nato by 0.344s.
In the second semi-final, Dennis eclipsed Fenestraz’s benchmark by one-thousandth of a second to beat Rast by a comfortable 0.455 seconds and record a third successive final appearance.
Dennis had earlier beaten Jake Hughes’ fellow McLaren in the quarter-finals to become the only non-Nissan powertrain user to reach the last four.
Maserati MSG man Gunther will line up fifth ahead of Hughes and Porsche’s Antonio Felix da Costa, who lost to Rast in his quarter-final.
The other driver to qualify in the group stage was Jean-Eric Verne, but he and his DS Penske team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne will start Saturday’s race from the pit lane.
This was after DS Penske was found to be using illegal equipment in the pit lane in practice to scan the tire barcodes of every car in the field, something the stewards believed could give the team a big advantage.
Dennis was the only driver in the top four in the standings going into the duels, with Porsche driver Wehrlein having to start 18th after finishing only 10th fastest of the 11 drivers in the first group.
Nick Cassidy, third in points, was only sixth fastest for the Envision, though best of the four Jaguar-powered cars in the field.
Cassidy is set to start from 10th behind the second Andretti car of Andre Lotterer, who returned to FE action after missing the previous round in Jakarta, and Robin Freins, the Abt man.
None of the works Jaguars made it out of the second group, with Sam Bird ninth fastest and outside title contender Mitch Evans failing to complete a lap at all after the team opted to replace his battery and drivetrain following a problem in the second training session.