Vettel takes pole away from Raikkonen in Bahrain

Sebastian Vettel will line up on pole with title rival Lewis Hamilton back in ninth.

Ferrari made it a front-row lockout in Bahrain after looking strong all weekend. Vettel took his first pole position of the season with Kimi Raikkonen taking second from Valtteri Bottas. Hamilton qualified fourth but with his grid penalty will fall to ninth on Sunday with Daniel Ricciardo finishing the session 5th.

Qualifying began with everyone bar both Ferrari’s and Valtteri Bottas running the supersoft tyres. Whatever tyres Max Verstappen had on they couldn’t stop him from sliding into the barrier after a mistake in the exit of turn 2 spun his Red Bull into the barriers putting him out of qualifying.

Fernando Alonso snuck through into the next phase of qualifying by the skin of his teeth, Romain Grosjean setting an identical lap time to the Spaniard but by virtue of setting the time first, the McLaren man went through and the Haas driver was dumped out. Marcus Ericsson, Charles Leclerc, Sergey Sirotkin and Lance Stroll joined Grosjean in being eliminated from Q1.

Q2 got underway with Mercedes sending Hamilton out on soft tyres, putting him on an alternative strategy with his grid penalty relegating him down the order. The world champion set a very competitive 1:28.4 putting him just a tenth behind Vettel.

Toro Rosso out-qualified both McLaren’s. The papaya orange cars are looking as though they are the third slowest package this weekend, only ahead of Williams and Sauber and nowhere near where the team are expecting to be now with new Renault engines in the back of the car.

The first runs of final qualifying saw the gaps close right up, first to fifth covered by just 0.3s. Raikkonen had looked strong putting himself on provisional pole, but his teammate had something left in the locker and stole pole away from the Finn. Mercedes couldn’t improve enough to threaten for pole, Hamilton will have his hands full recovering from ninth and there could be further entertainment with Verstappen coming back from 15th.