Piastri beats Russell and Leclerc to take pole in Bahrain

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri set the benchmark in the nail-biting qualifying session at the Bahrain Grand Prix to take his second career pole position. F1Technical’s lead journalist Balazs Szabo reports on the qualifying session in Manama.

McLaren looked the quickest car all through the Sakhir weekend, and the papaya team continued to impress in qualifying that turned into a nail-biting session.

Oscar Piastri set a 1m 29.841s on his last lap to beat the Mercedes of George Russell, who set mighty lap times in the second and third qualifying segment.

Ferrari brought a new floor to Bahrain which seemingly added more performance to the SF25 as Charles Leclerc managed to secure P3 on the grid for tomorrow's Bahrain race.

Confirming Mercedes' eye-catching performance in Manama, Andrea Kimi Antonelli completed a strong session for the Brackley-based outfit, securing his best ever F1 qualifying result with a fourth place.

Having already shown impressive speed in the middle part of qualifying, Pierre Gasly claimed fifth place for Alpine. The Frenchman beat championship leader Lando Norris, who will line up sixth on the grid tomorrow after having made a mistake at Turn 1 on his final push lap.

On the back of his brilliant performance in Japan, Max Verstappen endured a tough session, constantly complaining about the brakes of his RB21. The Dutchman ended up seventh, ahead of Carlos Sainz who delivered his best qualifying performance so far with Williams.

Lewis Hamilton appeared to struggle for balance all through the weekend, and while he looked fairly comfortable in Q1 and Q2, he ended up only ninth, bringing his session to a disappointing end.

Following his brake and balance issues across the practice sessions, Red Bull's Yuki Tsunoda put in a great effort to put his Red Bull in Q3.

Jack Doohan shone during the early stages of Qualifying, running as high as fifth in Q1. However, he fractionally missed out on making it into the closing qualifying segment, but he will still line up 11th on the grid.

Racing Bulls rookie Isack Hadjar and Aston Martin driver Fernando Alonso will start in P12 and P13 respectively. Esteban Ocon looked fairly quick in Q1, but he endured a heavy crash after having getting on the throttle at the exit of Turn 2.

Alexander Albon had a difficult qualifying, ending up 15th quickest, ahead of Sauber’s Nico Hulkenberg and Racing Bulls driver Liam Lawson, having experienced an apparent Drag Reduction System problem aboard his Racing Bulls car.

Sauber youngster Gabriel Bortoleto and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll ended up 18th and 19th respectively.

Having celebrated his first Q3 appearance at last weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix, Haas racer Oliver Bearman finished 20th and last on the Qualifying timesheets after a compromised final Q1 lap, which featured a couple of costly mistakes.