Charles Leclerc beat Max Verstappen to claim a dramatic pole position for Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix.
The early world championship leader produced a blistering final lap to pip his title rival to top spot by less than three-hundredths of a second after an electric qualifying session at the revamped Albert Park circuit in Melbourne.
It is Ferrari’s first pole position in Australia - where F1 has been unable to visit for three years due to Covid-19 - since Kimi Raikkonen led the grid way back in 2007, while it’s a second already for Leclerc this season after he also topped the standings in Bahrain on opening weekend, going on to win that race before being narrowly bested by Verstappen in another fascinating duel in Saudi Arabia a fortnight ago.
Sergio Perez will start third for Red Bull, with Lando Norris claiming P4 on a brilliant day for McLaren and Australian team-mate Daniel Ricciardo lining up in seventh.
Lewis Hamilton managed to haul himself up to fifth place after another difficult start to the race weekend for struggling constructors’ champions Mercedes, with George Russell in sixth.
However, Leclerc’s Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz had to make do with a hugely disappointing ninth place after a tyre issue, behind the Alpine of Esteban Ocon.
Fernando Alonso will start 10th tomorrow after an unfortunate crash that ended an impressive afternoon midway through Q3.
“It felt good,” pole-sitter Leclerc said of his final lap. “Even more because it’s a track where I’ve always struggled in the past as a driver.
“I don’t know, it probably doesn’t fit me as well. This weekend we really worked hard. It was a bit messy for the three practice sessions for me, I managed to do some good laps but not everything together.
“But in Q3 I managed to put everything together, so it feels great. I’m very happy to be starting on pole tomorrow.
“The car is nice to drive. The Red Bulls were very quick in FP2 during the long fuel run, to be honest we were quite surprised by our pace in qualifying.
“Everything is possible tomorrow. We just need to do a good start and then hopefully we can keep that first position.”
Reigning world champion Verstappen, meanwhile, could not hide his frustration after being outgunned by Leclerc in qualifying once again.
“Not good,” he said. “I didn’t really feel good in the car the whole weekend so far.
“I think there’s not been one lap where I actually felt confident, a bit of a struggle. Of course second is still a good result, but just not feeling that great to go to the limit. We’ll try to analyse it.”
He added: “Probably in the race pace, everything stabilises a bit. For me, this weekend so far has been all over the place. We’re happy to be second, but as a team we want more.”
Saturday’s qualifying session also saw a heavy collision between Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll and the error-prone Williams of Nicholas Latifi, with both drivers blaming the other after a costly miscommunication that led to the first set of red flags near the end of Q1.
Stroll had earlier crashed into the wall during the third and final free practice session, following team-mate Sebastian Vettel, who was only able to produce one lap in qualifying after a busy day for the struggling team’s engineers.
Four-time world champion Vettel is returning to action this weekend after missing the first two races of the new season due to Covid.
