Edoardo Mortara will line up fourth on the grid for tomorrow's 10 lap qualification race after a frantic qualifying session at the challenging Macau street circuit today.

The Volkswagen-powered Signature driver built upon a solid opening practice yesterday to stake his claim as the man to beat around Macau with a blistering performance in morning practice, but he was denied pole position in today's second qualifying session once again as a result of a red flag late in the session.

22-year-old Mortara, taking part in his third consecutive Macau F3 weekend, set an impressive benchmark in the morning, beating the existing lap record set in last year's event. Putting his performance into the context of this year's event, his sensational time of 2m10.593s was over four-tenths-of-a-second quicker than his nearest rival and a massive 1.3s quicker than Thursday's provisional pole position time.

Having secured a provisional third place in first qualifying, last year's Macau runner-up was determined to take pole position but the disjointed qualifying session, which also included a lengthy red flag period just after midway through, prevented him from fulfilling the true potential of his and Signature's Dallara-Volkswagen package.

As lap times tumbled in the closing part of the session, Mortara was able to shave a further three-tenths-of-a-second off his morning time but he could not dislodge pace-setter Marcus Ericsson's time of 2m10.042s, ending the day just 0.192s adrift.

The French-Italian rider was only third on the grid for last year's qualification race and was able supremely to convert that into a race win, so a similar strategy will be the target for tomorrow's race.

Mortara said: "To be honest, I am a bit disappointed to be only fourth on the grid for tomorrow's qualification race. We showed from the first laps this morning that we have a really competitive package here and I was hoping to take pole position.

"I was really surprised to break the official lap record in this morning's practice. We just carried on developing the set-up of the car to cope with the unique demands of this track and everything was working very harmoniously. Unfortunately the red and yellow flags hit us hard again this afternoon. I was able to go even quicker than this morning but the red flag at the end of the session meant we could not challenge for pole, even if I was quickest in the second sector by six-tenths. Nevertheless, pole position at this track is not crucial for victory, as I was able to show in last year's qualification race.

"We can take some comfort from knowing that we are quick and consistent, we just have to battle hard in the race to get ahead of the equally competitive guys in front of us. The Signature and Volkswagen guys continues to impress me with their work ethic and approach to this tough event, so if we keep focussed, I think we can be in with a good chance tomorrow which will set us up well for the main race on Sunday."