Lewis Hamilton claimed his 66th pole position in Formula 1, beating his Mercedes team-mate Valtteri Bottas to pole for the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Hamilton set a 1m40.593s, which was 0.434s quicker than Bottas. Ferrari locked out the second row of the grid, with Kimi Raikkonen ahead of team-mate Sebastian Vettel for only the second time this season.
Max Verstappen, who topped the opening two practice sessions of the weekend, was forced to settle for fifth place.
Verstappen’s team-mate Daniel Ricciardo was the only driver to make significant contact with the barriers, the Australian hit the wall with just four minutes of Q3 remaining, ending his session and bringing out the red flag.
Sergio Perez enjoyed his best qualifying of the year in sixth place, with team-mate Esteban Ocon in a career-best seventh place.
For the first time in his short Formula 1 career, Lance Stroll out-qualified Felipe Massa with the eighth quickest time. Ricciardo was 10th following his accident.
Pascal Wehrlein made his third Q2 appearance of the year, he was 15th quickest behind Nico Hulkenberg, Kevin Magnussen and the Toro Rosso pair of Carlos Sainz Jr. and Daniil Kvyat.
The McLaren duo of Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne, who have 75 places of grid penalties between them, were knocked out of Q1 in 16th and 19th respectively.
This marks the first time this season that Alonso has failed to progress into Q2.
Romain Grosjean and Marcus Ericsson were also casualties of the first part of qualifying in 17th and 18th.
Jolyon Palmer was unable to compete in the session due to damage sustained in FP3 where his Renault caught fire.
