Sebastian Vettel claimed his fourth pole of the season after beating Valtteri Bottas to top spot in qualifying for the Canadian GP.
The German led a Ferrari surge on Saturday in Montreal and in the all-important Q3 session produced an excellent first flying lap to overhaul the Mercedes by just under a tenth of a second with a 1m10.764s.
Max Verstappen had led all three of the practice sessions before qualifying, but once again Red Bull’s lack of a special engine mode saw them slip back with the Dutchman having to produce a rapid final lap to snatch third.
Usually the master of the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, but Lewis Hamilton struggled under braking into the hairpin on many of his timed laps during the session, including both Q3 laps as the world champion had to settle for fourth.
Kimi Raikkonen was fifth in the second Ferrari as Daniel Ricciardo completed a tight top six covered by just over a third of a second.
It was shades of 2017 in the midfield as Renault and Force India completed the final four positions inside the top 10.
Nico Hulkenberg claimed the ‘best of the rest’ honours for the French manufacturer in P7 with Esteban Ocon able to put a dash of pink between the two yellow machines.
That meant Carlos Sainz was ninth with Sergio Perez struggling to get a good lap together in Q3 and falling to P10.
Haas was hoping a new upgrade package would bring them back into the battle for the fourth best team. Instead, Kevin Magnussen had to settle for 11th while Romain Grosjean’s qualifying was over before it had barely begun after an engine failure leaving the pits in Q1 leaving the Frenchman at the back of the grid.
Brendon Hartley enjoyed one of his stronger performances of the year in P12, comfortably ahead of teammate Pierre Gasly who was an early casualty in the first segment.
Charles Leclerc became the first Sauber driver to make Q2 on four consecutive occasions since 2014 as the Monegasque claimed 13th.
He would be ahead of both McLaren’s as their single lap pace and lack of top speed did prove a weakness on the straights of Montreal.
Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne narrowly avoided being eliminated in Q1 but wouldn’t get any higher than 14th and 15th respectively.
Towards the back, the two Williams again struggled with Lance Stroll and Sergey Sirotkin 17th and 18th as Marcus Ericsson’s session was ended early after hitting the wall exiting Turn 9, damaging his Sauber car.
The full grid can be seen below:
