Lewis Hamilton hinted he was happy with his qualifying result despite only going seventh fastest in Saturday's session.
Qualifying in Bahrain was a tense, tight affair, with little separating the teams in the first two parts of the session. There were no real shocks, with the 'big three' teams all making it safely through to Q3 and Aston Martin living up to the hype by also having both their drivers in the top 10.
But in that all-important final part of qualifying, Mercedes were not really a major factor. They qualified sixth and seventh, with George Russell one place ahead of Hamilton, while both of them were beaten by Fernando Alonso in that rocket ship of an Aston.
