Lewis Hamilton showed he hasn’t lost his cool since winning his seventh world title with a stunning pole at the Bahrain Grand Prix. It is his tenth pole of 2020 and the ninety-eighth of his amazing career.
Valtteri Bottas made it a Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team one-two, with the Finn leaving it late to get on the front row at the expense of Max Verstappen.
Q1 – Usual Suspects Crash Out
It was a slow start to Q1 with only Verstappen and George Russell going out in the first couple of minutes. The rest of the pack followed onto track with around ten minutes left. However, in the end, it was the usual suspects that were out in Q1.
Alfa Romeo Racing ORLEN duo Antonio Giovinazzi and Kimi Räikkonen found themselves out at the first hurdle. They will be starting sixteenth and seventeenth respectively.
Haas F1 Team weren’t happy with their performance and have been struggling all weekend. Kevin Magnussen is starting eighteenth with Romain Grosjean in nineteenth. Nicholas Latifi was out qualified yet again by his Williams Racing team-mate Russell. Latifi hasn’t beaten Russell in qualifying all year and he will start rock bottom in twentieth.
Q2 – Ferrari Drivers Eliminated in Red Flag-Marred Session
Carlos Sainz Jr. has a qualifying session to forget. He locked up his car going into Turn 1 and took a little spin. He was unable to get his car to restart and the session had to subsequently be red flagged. He will be starting fifteenth. At the time, no driver had set a lap with nine minutes left on the clock.
Russell qualified in fourteenth with a lap over two seconds away from safety, one I’m sure he will be disappointed with. However, he has still not been outqualified in his F1 career by a team-mate since debuting at the start of 2019.
Both Scuderia Ferrari’s found themselves eliminated from Q2. At last year’s Bahrain Grand Prix, the Ferrari’s started on the front row but today they missed out on Q3 by the smallest of margins with Sebastian Vettel starting in eleventh and Charles Leclerc twelfth.
The final omission from Q2 was Lance Stroll. He cited there was a miscommunication with the BWT Racing Point Formula One Team pit wall at the end of his lap exclaimed “we will talk after”. He went out to do his lap on the used mediums from before the red flag. He is starting thirteenth, a big difference from his surprise pole position in the Turkish Grand Prix two weeks ago.
Q3 – Hamilton shines, Bottas Denies Verstappen for Second
It’ an eleventh front row lock out for Mercedes with champion Hamilton on pole with his team-mate Bottas in second. Hamilton’s first run saw him top the session, a time he then went onto beat by more than four-tenths of a second.
It looked as if Verstappen was going to split the two ‘Silver Arrows’ with a second place but in the end, he had to settle for a third-place start. He improved on his second run but not by enough to deny Bottas a place on the front row. However, his Aston Martin Red Bull Racing team-mate Alexander Albon is joining him on the second row in fourth. Albon was still significantly slower than Verstappen. His qualifying time was just over half a second down on the Dutchman, but it was a good turnaround from twenty-four hours earlier, where the Thai driver was in the barriers at the final turn with a heavily damaged car.
Sergio Pérez continued to prove why he should have a seat next year. His qualifying time was only four hundredths of a second off Albon’s and he will start in fifth. He was the final driver to set a time in Q3, and he jumped up from ninth to a place on the third row.
Daniel Ricciardo continued to out qualify Renault DP World F1 Team team-mate Esteban Ocon with a sixth and seventh place start. Ocon missed out on beating Ricciardo just two thousandth of a second, with the Australian leaving it very late to gain the advantage on the Frenchman.
Scuderia AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly had been impressive all weekend and was looking to be high on the grid. However, he could only get and eighth place start with team-mate Daniil Kvyat in tenth. Finishing off the top ten was McLaren’s Lando Norris in ninth.
| Pos | No | Driver | Nat. | Team | Q1 | Q2 | Q3 | Laps |
| 1 | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | GBR | Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team | 1:28.343 | 1:27.586 | 1:27.264 | 16 |
| 2 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | FIN | Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team | 1:28.767 | 1:28.063 | 1:27.553 | 16 |
| 3 | 33 | Max Verstappen | NED | Aston Martin Red Bull Racing | 1:28.885 | 1:28.025 | 1:27.678 | 15 |
| 4 | 23 | Alexander Albon | THA | Aston Martin Red Bull Racing | 1:28.732 | 1:28.749 | 1:28.274 | 18 |
| 5 | 11 | Sergio Pérez | MEX | BWT Racing Point Formula One Team | 1:29.178 | 1:28.894 | 1:28.322 | 20 |
| 6 | 3 | Daniel Ricciardo | AUS | Renault DP World F1 Team | 1:29.005 | 1:28.648 | 1:28.417 | 17 |
| 7 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | FRA | Renault DP World F1 Team | 1:29.203 | 1:28.937 | 1:28.419 | 14 |
| 8 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | FRA | Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda | 1:28.971 | 1:29.008 | 1:28.448 | 14 |
| 9 | 4 | Lando Norris | GBR | McLaren F1 Team | 1:29.464 | 1:28.877 | 1:28.542 | 17 |
| 10 | 26 | Daniil Kvyat | RUS | Scuderia AlphaTauri Honda | 1:29.158 | 1:28.944 | 1:28.618 | 17 |
| 11 | 5 | Sebastian Vettel | GER | Scuderia Ferrari | 1:29.142 | 1:29.149 | 11 | |
| 12 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | MON | Scuderia Ferrari | 1:29.137 | 1:29.165 | 11 | |
| 13 | 18 | Lance Stroll | CAN | BWT Racing Point Formula One Team | 1:28.679 | 1:29.557 | 11 | |
| 14 | 63 | George Russell | GBR | Williams Racing | 1:29.294 | 1:31.218 | 11 | |
| 15 | 55 | Carlos Sainz Jr. | ESP | McLaren F1 Team | 1:28.975 | No Time | 5 | |
| 16 | 99 | Antonio Giovinazzi | ITA | Alfa Romeo Racing | 1:29.491 | 6 | ||
| 17 | 7 | Kimi Räikkönen | FIN | Alfa Romeo Racing | 1:29.810 | 6 | ||
| 18 | 20 | Kevin Magnussen | DEN | Haas F1 Team | 1:30.111 | 6 | ||
| 19 | 8 | Romain Grosjean | FRA | Haas F1 Team | 1:30.138 | 6 | ||
| 20 | 6 | Nicholas Latifi | CAN | Williams Racing | 1:30.182 | 6 |
