It wasn’t an easy ride to pole position for Hamilton, but he pulled out all the stops to secure the top spot on his final flying lap in Q3. His first time was deleted due to infringing track limits – something that affected many of the drivers through all of the sessions. Red Bull locked out the second row of the grid, with Verstappen qualifying ahead of Ricciardo for the first time since he joined Red Bull.

Kimi Räikkönen beat Sebastian Vettel on the third row, but the German is set to take a gearbox related penalty anyway. Both Alonso and Hülkenberg had their Q3 times deleted, pushing them back to the bottom of the top ten. Jenson Button, meanwhile, was bitterly disappointed to wind up 17th, missing out on the cut to escape the first session. Finally, Marcus Ericsson didn’t participate in qualifying after his huge crash in final practice saw him head to the hospital for checks.