Sebastian Vettel snatched pole position from his Ferrari teammate Kimi Raikkonen with his final lap as the Scuderia swept the front row at the Bahrain GP.
The German had made a small mistake on his first flying lap but was able to rectify it on his second setting a 1m27.958s to take top spot by just half a tenth from his Finnish partner.
Mercedes got close with Valtteri Bottas only a further 0.023s behind in third leading Lewis Hamilton in fourth with his five-place penalty dropping the world champion to ninth.
That promotes Daniel Ricciardo onto the second row for Red Bull, who was the sole representative for the Milton Keynes outfit after a crash for Max Verstappen in Q1.
Pierre Gasly confirmed Toro Rosso’s excellent pace all weekend as the lead midfield runner and will start fifth ahead of Kevin Magnussen on a mixed day for the Haas team.
Nico Hulkenberg will start seventh alongside the man who replaced him at Force India, Esteban Ocon in eighth with Hamilton and Carlos Sainz completing the top 10 in the second Renault.
Brendon Hartley will be very disappointed after missing out on Q3 by less than a tenth of a second in 11th in the second Toro Rosso, however, the Honda-powered team would have both cars ahead of the two McLaren’s incredibly.
Fernando Alonso was fortunate just to make it into Q2 and will start 13th with teammate Stoffel Vandoorne 14th. They also had the second Force India of Sergio Perez ahead in 12th.
An eventful Q1 saw Max Verstappen set a fast time before spinning into the barrier on the exit of Turn 3 in his Red Bull, ending his participation and meaning he will start a lowly 15th on the grid.
Another surprise came with Romain Grosjean failing to get out of the drop zone in a Haas car which has looked one of the stronger midfield packages. The Frenchman set exactly the same time as Alonso who made the cut but the Spaniard went through having set that time first.
The two Saubers and two Williams’ completed the grid with Marcus Ericsson P17 ahead of Sergey Sirotkin. Charles Leclerc had looked faster than his teammate in practice but spun off at the final corner on his final attempt as Lance Stroll will start last.
