Sebastian Vettel on pole for Bahrain Grand Prix

Sebastian Vettel will start the Bahrain GP on pole positions at the front of a Ferrari one-two – and eight places ahead of Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton.

Vettel edged out Scuderia team-mate Kimi Raikkonen with a late surge which the team hailed as a “lion’s lap”.

Raikkonen had been the fastest Ferrari driver throughout practice but it was Vettel who produced the goods when it mattered.

The German had run wide on his first flying lap for the Q3 shoot-out but made no mistake on his second and final attempt to secure the 51st pole position of his F1 career by just over a tenth of a second from Raikkonen and Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas.

Hamilton, who will be hit with a grid penalty due to an unscheduled gearbox change, was only fourth quickest.

As a result of his demotion, Hamilton will start from ninth for the race.

Daniel Ricciardo, in a Red Bull car which is expected to perform strongly in race conditions, will join Bottas on the second row with Pierre Gasly, the unexpected star of qualifying, promoted to fifth in his Toro Rosso ahead of Hamilton.

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen crashed out at the beginning of Q1 and will line up no higher than 15th.

Ahead of Verstappen will be Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne.

This is effectively McLaren’s second home race given their financial ties with the Bahraini royal family, but the guests which squeezed into the team’s hospitality suite were provided with little fanfare as Alonso qualified a torrid 13th. Vandoorne was one place further back.

Their divorce from Honda power, and switch to Renault, was supposed to usher in a new dawn for Britain’s most successful Formula One team, but their glories of yesteryear appear a distance memory.

Adding insult to injury, both of the Toro Rosso cars, now powered by Honda, will start ahead of Alonso and Vandoorne.

Bahrain GP Qualifying Grid