Mercedes’ Valtteri Bottas made it three pole positions in a row by taking pole position for the Spanish Grand Prix.

Bottas looked untouchable during qualifying around the Circuit de Catalunya and took pole position with a scintillating lap of 1:15.406 on his first run in Q3. Bottas’ time was 0.634s faster than Mercedes team mate Lewi Hamilton who ended qualifying 2nd fastest and in doing so locked out the front row yet again this season.

“This feels really good. In every run in Qualifying I found room for improvement, little bits here and there, and I managed to get everything together in Q3 and had a very strong first lap,” said Bottas after qualifying.

Lining up on the second row of the grid is Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel in P3 with Max Verstappen in the Red Bull in P4. Vettel with a 1:16.272 was 0.866s off Bottas’ time. Verstappen was just about a tenth off Vettel. The Dutchman giving Ferrari something to think about in the coming races.

Charles Le Clerc could only manage P5 after suffering some floor damage on his car in Q2 by running wide at T9. In order to get through to Q3 Leclerc had to run twice in Q2 and only had one set of tyres available in Q3. He ran twice with the one set in Q3 but could not improve his time after his first run.

In P6 is the Red Bull of Pierre Gasly who just got ahead of the Haas of Romain Grosjean in P7. Gasly finished two tenths ahead of the Haas. P8 was Grosjean’s team mate Kevin Magnussen who was not that far off the pace of the Frenchman.

Ninth fastest was Toro Rosso’s Daniil Kvyat ahead of Renault’s Daniel Ricciardo. Ricciardo will have to serve his three place grid drop penalty for reversing into Kvyat at the previous race.

The two McLaren’s of Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz, and Toro Rosso’s Alexander Albon – who qualified 11th, 13th and 12th respectively will all move up one position thanks to Ricciardo’s penalty drop.

Nico Hulkenberg in the other Renault was one of the surprises to be eliminated at the end of Q1. Hulkenberg, while on a timed run, locked up into T4 and while trying to catch the rear of his car, pinged across the gravel and nearly made contact with the wall. Minus a front wing which was being dragged along under his car, Hulkenberg made it back to the pits for repairs but it was a little too late as the German could not make it through to Q2 on subsequent runs.

Looks like @ValtteriBottas had his porridge this morning 💪#SpanishGP 🇪🇸 #F1 pic.twitter.com/baEEJ28mjc

— Formula 1 (@F1) May 11, 2019