After Max Verstappen storms to pole position ahead of Charles Leclerc he decides to...

Max Verstappen has taken pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix on Saturday, beating Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc to P1 following a tense session on Friday.

The Red Bull driver beat a congested chasing pack behind him, with his pole lap in fact slightly slower than Leclerc managed in Q2, but it proved enough for the three-time reigning World Champion to put himself at the front of the grid come lights out.

He will be joined by Leclerc on the front row on Saturday, with George Russell and Carlos Sainz behind them on the second row and Sergio Perez rounding out the top five.

Max Verstappen takes pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix
A muted start to Q1 saw the majority of drivers looking to go straight onto soft tyres, with a big performance gap to the medium tyres and a tightly-bunched field.

That was evidenced by the top 15 drivers being within a second of Carlos Sainz’s benchmark of a 1:29.909 following their first runs, with both Saubers and Alpines in the drop zone along with the Haas of Kevin Magnussen.

When the final runs played out, improvements from a host of drivers dropped Lewis Hamilton into the elimination zone, but the seven-time World Champion improved to 10th to secure his place in Q2.

But the end of Q1 saw the entire field covered by only a second, and it’s a back-row lockout for Alpine with Esteban Ocon and Pierre Gasly behind Logan Sargeant’s Williams, with Zhou Guanyu and Valtteri Bottas also knocked out and separated by one thousandth of a second.

While plenty of the remaining drivers opted for used tyres in the first runs of Q2, the Red Bull drivers did not and Max Verstappen laid down a gauntlet of a 1:29.374, some half a second clear of Sergio Perez in second heading into the final part of that session.

was all-important for the drivers to set the best lap they could, then, to put themselves into Q3 as the track evolved and the temperature cooled in Bahrain.

Sainz went to within two tenths of Verstappen’s time, before Leclerc took two tenths out of the three-time World Champion’s best time to set up what looked like an intriguing battle for pole position.

Nico Hulkenberg caught the eye by going sixth fastest for Haas, while Yuki Tsunoda and Daniel Ricciardo missed out for RB, with a lap time deletion for Kevin Magnussen leaving him in P15, while Lance Stroll and Alex Albon also dropped out in Q2.