The Lotus driver, making his racing return this weekend as he replaces Jarno Trulli, qualified in 21st position, two places behind Kovalainen.

After finishing 0.8 seconds behind the Finn, Chandhok said he had achieved his target for the day.

"I've got to say I'm pleased with how qualifying went today," said the Indian. "Tony had said to me that if I could get within a second of Heikki he'd be proud, and I finished about 0.8 seconds off him so that's a goal achieved.

"One of the challenges today has been finding out how much grip there is on the soft tyres on low fuel and that was always going to be a pretty steep learning curve in quali, but my times have been coming down all weekend so I'm getting there.

"As I've been saying, the last couple of days have been about learning the car, the tyres and how to get the best out of the DRS system, so to get as close as I reasonably could expect to my team-mate is pretty good progress."

Kovalainen was also satisfied with his showing, even if the Finn was nearly two seconds off the pace of his closest rival.

"I'm relatively pleased with the performance today but I think there was still more to come from the car," he said. "On the second run I was still struggling to get the front tyres working and I maybe pushed a bit more than I should so couldn't improve on my first run.

"That run had gone well and I was able to get a decent time in so all in all not too bad."