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Jonny Reid has qualified in second place for tomorrow's opening sprint race in in Mexico.
Black Beauty will share the front row with pole-sitter South Africa, but will start from sixth on feature grid after the incredibly
close qualifying sessions on the fast, flowing Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
Swiss driver Neel Jani has put his nation into a good position to defend its championship lead.
Switzerland will be right behind New Zealand in the sprint race and has qualified alongside Canada on the front row for the main race.
France, second on the overall points table, 10 points behind the Swiss and a further 10 points ahead of the Kiwis, were well off the pace and will start 16th in the opening race and 14th in the second.
Reid was rapt to be on the front row for tomorrow's opening dash - a view echoed by team manager John Sears.
"We'd rather be on the front row for the sprint race because it's the hardest race to make up places," Sears said.
"We have a lot of faith in the pit crew - and in Jonny's driving - to make up ground in the longer feature race."
Sears says Black Beauty is looking fast and Reid is becoming increasingly familiar with a track that encourages speed and favours brave driving, but bites back when drivers make mistakes.
"I think there will be quite a lot of carnage tomorrow," Sears said. "There's a lot of interlinking corners and if you go out of shape for one, you're likely to be off-line for another couple.
"The new chicane at the Peraltada corner is also going to catch people out. You can see drivers giving it a go, but failing to pull it off. It's one of those circuits where there's a fine line between pushing hard...and pushing too hard."
Sears believes the track will be dangerous early before rubber is laid down and offers the cars more grip - but tyre wear will be a big concern.
"The circuit is notoriously tough on tyres and we're likely to see mistakes towards the end of the feature race on wearing tyres."
Earlier in the day Reid set the sixth fastest time for the second practice session in succession.
A1 Team Italy set the pace as the scheduled one hour session overran by 40 minutes because of four red-flag periods involving mishaps by the teams from Lebanon, Portugal and Mexico.
It was another incredibly close session at the challenging high altitude circuit, with just over a second covering the top 18 teams. Seven teams had their lap times deleted for cutting the chicane leading into the final Peraltada corner.
Tomorrow's action starts at 6am with the 20-minute sprint race, followed by the 70-minute feature race starting at 10am.
- NZ HERALD STAFF
