Verstappen edges Leclerc for Bahrain GP pole

Max Verstappen stormed to pole position for the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix ahead of Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc.

The reigning champion was challenged more closely than expected by Leclerc through the hour, with just 0.059s separating them after their first laps of Q3 despite the Monegasque using used tires for his initial attempt.

Pole seemed sure to go down to the wire, but Leclerc failed to improve as expected with new rubber bolted to his car, finding only 0.073s on his second lap.

It paved the way for Verstappen to snare top spot with a sizzling time of 1m 29.179s with his new Red Bull — slower than Leclerc had managed in Q2 but enough for the Dutchman to end qualifying unbeaten.

“To really get everything out of it in Q3 was a little bit more difficult,” he said. “But of course I’m very happy to be on pole.

“To be honest, I was a little bit unexpected, but luckily in qualifying the car came to us. I’m confident that we can have a strong race.”

Leclerc ended up 0.228s behind Verstappen, and though he was buoyed by Ferrari’s competitiveness, he was frustrated not to have strung together the pole lap.

“I’m a bit disappointed, but we did a good qualifying,” he said. “It’s been a tricky weekend until now. I think we lost a little bit the rhythm with the used set of [softs] in Q3.

“We really think that Red Bull is still ahead by quite a bit in the race. We’ll see. If there’s an opportunity, as always I’ll go for it.”

George Russell was pleased to validate Mercedes’s off-season improvements, though he didn’t think Verstappen could be caught in race trim.

“We’ve obviously made a big step forward in single-lap and with quali pace,” he said. “We hope we haven’t compromised the race pace at all. I think it’ll be a close fight between everybody other than Max.”