Lewis Hamilton snatched pole and set a new lap record in Bahrain finishing ahead of his teammate Nico Rosberg by seven one hundreds of a second to make it two pole positions in a row for Hamilton at the start of 2016.
Hamilton needed a second flying lap after the Briton ran wide through the last corner which cost him half a second.
Once again the new elimination-style qualifying was disappointing, in the words of David Croft “it was a bit of a damp squib”. With many teams caught out by the 90-second intervals, we were left with the majority of the cars sat in the pits, particularly in Q1 and Q2 when only one car was on track for the final three minutes.
It was as we were in Australia with Ferrari completing a second-row lock-out with Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen finishing third and fourth respectively after neither driver could improve their time on their second runs.
Ricciardo qualified fifth ahead of Valtteri Bottas after the Finn was caught out by the Australian’s time which left the Williams driver in the pits with not enough time to complete a second run.
Seventh was secured by Felipe Massa ahead of Nico Hulkenberg who showed great one lap pace in the Force India.
Verstappen and Grosjean rounded out the top ten, ninth and tenth respectively.
But the story of Q2 was the lack of track action, with six minutes left we only had Hulkenberg on track, his time knocked out Sainz, Verstappen and Grosjean who were all sat in the pits with not enough time to set a lap.
Vandoorne impressed on his Formula One qualfying debut qualifying 12th ahead of the Haas of Esteban Gutierrez who was caught out by the Belgian’s time.
Dissapointment for Jenson Button who was confident heading into qualifying after setting the third quickest time in FP2 on Friday. The former World Champion’s time was just about good enough to qualify 14th ahead the Red Bull of Daniil Kvyat.
Pascal Wehrlein showed good one lap pace in the Manor qualifying 16th ahead of Marcus Ericsson and the Force India of Sergio Perez who got caught out in traffic on his flying lap which left him 18th
Renault’s one lap pace was once again shown to be inadequate with Kevin Magnussen and Jolyon Plamer qualifying 19th and 20th. Kevin Magnussen will, however, start from the pitlane after the Dane failed to stop at the weighbridge during FP2.
Rio Haryanto and Felipe Nasr completed the back end of the grid.
