Hamilton surges to Bahrain pole

Lewis Hamilton displayed a blistering turn of speed to claim a dominant pole position for the Bahrain GP and continue his unbeaten start to qualifying in 2015.

For the fourth time in four events since his title defence began in Australia, the in-form Hamilton proved too quick for his rivals over a single lap with the scale of this particular performance heightened by the fact that under-pressure team-mate Nico Rosberg – the polesitter at Sakhir for the last two seasons – was beaten to the second front-row berth by Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel.

Hamilton had already served notice of his pace in the W06 under the floodlights with an eye-opening lap in Q2 and on his final run in the Q3 shootout he went quicker still, with the world champion’s time of 1:32.571 six-tenths quicker than last year’s pole.

Bahrain GP Qualifying timesheet

1. Lewis Hamilton, Mercedes, 1:32.571

2. Sebastian Vettel, Ferrari, 1:32.982

3. Nico Rosberg, Mercedes, 1:33.129

4. Kimi Raikkonen, Ferrari, 1:33.227

5. Valtteri Bottas, Williams, 1:33.381

6. Felipe Massa, Williams, 1:33.744

7. Daniel Ricciardo, Red Bull, 1:33.832

8. Nico Hulkenberg, Force India, 1:34.450

9. Carlos Sainz, Toro Rosso, 1:34.462

10. Romain Grosjean, Lotus, 1:34.484

...SkySports