Hamilton beats Vettel to Bahrain GP pole

Lewis Hamilton took his fourth consecutive pole position as he beat Sebastian Vettel in qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix.

In an exciting finish to the session, Hamilton set a best time of 1:32.571 on his final lap to beat Vettel by 0.4s and take pole at the Bahrain International Circuit for the first time in his F1 career. The defending world champion had looked a class above throughout qualifying - topping all three parts of the session - and was over half a second faster than team-mate Nico Rosberg who will start from third place.

Kimi Raikkonen starts fourth after posting a time less than 0.1s slower than Rosberg, while Valtteri Bottas also threatened to beat a Mercedes as he ended up fifth fastest, a quarter of a second away from P3.

Felipe Massa will make it an all-Williams third row as he edged out Daniel Ricciardo, while Nico Hulkenberg impressed to take eighth in his Force India ahead of Carlos Sainz and Romain Grosjean.

The second part of qualifying featured a McLaren for the first time after Fernando Alonso comfortably made it through Q1. However, despite a late attempt the Spaniard missed out on a place in the top ten by 0.4s. Alonso's lap time was only good enough for 14th on the grid, with only Max Verstappen slower than him in Q2.

Sergio Perez was the unlucky driver to drop out in 11th place as he was pipped by 0.063s by Sainz as the Toro Rosso driver stopped two Force Indias making it in to the top ten. The two Saubers also missed out with Felipe Nasr just 0.033s faster than team-mate Marcus Ericsson.

Q1 started in a familiar fashion for Jenson Button, who stopped on track for the third time in four sessions this weekend before he had even completed one lap. Ron Dennis showed his annoyance in the garage but was soon celebrating Alonso's progression.

A surprise casualty of the opening session was Pastor Maldonado who was knocked out at the death by Verstappen having run in the top ten throughout the weekend. Maldonado's struggles were caused by an engine issue and he was joined by Daniil Kvyat, who became the first Red Bull to be knocked out in a Q1 session since Mark Webber at Valencia in 2012.

The two Manor cars also dropped out in the first part of qualifying, with Will Stevens a second faster than team-mate Roberto Merhi. While both were comfortably inside 107%, Merhi's time would only have been good enough for fifth place on the GP2 grid.

Click here for analysis of the development war between Ferrari and Mercedes 

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