There was little to separate Evans and Vergne in the final leg of qualifying, with the DS Penske driver holding an early edge before Evans quickly reversed the advantage before the end of the first sector.

The real-time gap between the two continued to ebb and flow, with Evans extending his advantage to as much as 0.125s before Vergne brought down the deficit to the Jaguar.

The duel between Evans and Vergne remained tightly poised until the very end, but the Jaguar driver managed to secure pole position by 0.021s even as Vergne clawed back some of the deficit right at the end of the session.

Evans had breezed through his quarter final duel by over a second over Maximilian Guenther, who endured a scruffy lap on what was otherwise an encouraging performance from the Maserati MSG team.

This set Evans up against Sebastien Buemi in the semis and the two drivers initially went head-to-head, the gap between the two less than a tenth of a second after the opening sector. But Evans quickly started pulling away from the Diriyah polesitter, eventually taking the top spot by the best part of three tenths.

Track limits at the first chicane proved to be a major point of contention, leading to a long delay before the semi-finals during which the times of Rene Rast, Edoardo Mortara and Sam Bird were all deleted.

Vergne was originally due to start from third row of the grid having been beaten by Bird in his duel, but was promoted to the next leg of qualifying when the Jaguar driver lost his time due to a track limits infringement.

The Frenchman earned a safe passage through finals, as both Rast and Mortara were also penalised for the same offence, meaning he had no opposition in his semi-final.

Behind Evans and Vergne, Buemi will line up third on the grid for Envision after beating the Nissan of Sacha Fenestraz, who will nevertheless start a career-best fourth.

Guenther will take fifth spot on the grid, with the three drivers who had their laptimes deleted - Bird, Mortara and Rast - following up in that order.

Championship leader Pascal Wehrlein was the first driver to be eliminated in Group A, the German driver failing to make the cut by 0.145s.

Wehrlein’s teammate Antonio Felix da Costa also had a disappointing qualifying session as he ended up seventh in his group, while the two Mahindra drivers were also eliminated in group stages in the team’s home race, with Lucas di Grassi ending up a distant last after going straight at the Turn 12/13 chicane on his final flying lap.

The second group was interrupted by a red flag caused when Kelvin van der Linde couldn’t make Turn 16 due to what appeared to be a technical problem, with only Rast and Mortara able to make any improvements when the session resumed with just over six minutes left on the clock.

Andretti duo Jake Dennis and Andre Lotterer were both knocked out of the group, marking an early end to qualifying for all Porsche-powered cars.

It followed Wehrlein suffering a major shunt in the opening practice on Friday that was caused by a vehicle control unit issue, which forced Porsche to withdraw all its remaining cars from the session.

Wehrlein will line up ninth on the grid ahead of Nick Cassidy’s Envision, with Oliver Rowland 11th in the best of the two Mahindras.

Da Costa will take the start from 12th ahead of Andretti’s Dennis, while Vandoorne even further back in 17th.