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Vettel and his Ferrari team-mate Raikkonen denied Mercedes their 6th consecutive pole position at Sakhir, Bahrain International Circuit. The Ferrari's were dominant in the Bahraini desert right from the start of Q1, also topping the sheets in Q2 and Q3. It was very close in between the Ferrari team-mates while Vettel managed to go 0.143secs faster in his final run meanwhile Raikkonen will start in the front row for the first time in 13 years at the Bahrain F1 race.
Bottas, the only driver to run the yellow soft tires with everyone else on the supersoft, was third quickest, outpacing Hamilton by just over a tenth of a second. Hamilton will start the race in P9 as a result of a five-place grid penalty for an unscheduled gearbox change.
Q1 saw Red Bull racing driver Max Verstappen crash out at Turn 2 and the session was red flagged until the track was clear to go.The other Red Bull driver Ricciardo qualified P5 and will start the race 4th on the grid alongside the Mercedes of Bottas.
With just 5 minutes to go when the session resumed everyone below sixth-place headed out for another run, with McLaren’s Alonso just making it through into Q2. Romain Grosjean the Haas driver Qualified P16 as he could not get a clear lap amidst traffic and a running wide at the final corner while setting an identical time to Alonso. The other Haas of Magnussen will start the race 6th on the grid alongside Gasly.
The Saubers of Ericsson and Leclerc, who spun out on the final lap with the clock counting down, he said on team radio that “I am so stupid”, the Williams of Sergey Sirotkin and Lance Stroll were also eliminated in Q3.
The surprise of this qualifying session was not Haas but the Honda-powered Toro Rosso who finished the opening race at Melbourne in the bottom of the table. The Toro Rosso driver Pierre Gasly qualified an impressive 6th and will start the race in P5, the 3rd row of the grid alongside Magnussen as a result of Hamilton's penalty. The other Torro Rosso driver Brendon Hartley just missed out Q3 as he starts P11.
The Force India driver Ocon qualified P9 while his team-mate Perez failed to make it into the final part of Qualifying and will start the race on P12.
Time Sheet from the Qualifying
