Max Verstappen claimed pole position for Sunday's season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix with a flawless final lap in a tense qualifying session, beating defending champion Lewis Hamilton by three-tenths of a second. The Dutchman grabbed the fourth pole position of his career for Red Bull with an emphatic demonstration of speed to deliver a first front row start alongside seven-time champion Hamilton in his Mercedes. Verstappen clocked a best lap in one minute and 28.997 seconds to outpace Hamilton by 0.338 seconds with Valtteri Bottas third in the second Mercedes. "It's looking good. Of course, it's no guarantee for the rest of the season, but to start like this is really great. I haven't experienced that at Red Bull, so I'm very happy with it," said the 23-year-old. "You can also see that the team got a bit of a lift after that win in Abu Dhabi (in the final race of 2020). That's paying off now."

He added: "I'm looking forward to the race -- we have a good car and we want a good clean start and first lap and then we will see. "Hopefully after the first lap we can do our thing and it's good enough. So far, everything has actually gone very well, so of course, I'm very happy." Charles Leclerc was fourth on Saturday for Ferrari ahead of Pierre Gasly of AlphaTauri and the McLarens of Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris. Carlos Sainz was eighth in the second Ferrari ahead of two-time champion Fernando Alonso, on his return to F1 with the Alpine team, and Lance Stroll, who was 10th for Aston Martin. Stroll's new team-mate four-time champion Sebastian Vettel struggled and qualified 18th, failing to make it out of Q1.- 'So fast' - Hamilton, who showed much-improved speed compared to the pre-season test, congratulated his rival. "He was so fast on that last lap. I gave it everything, but it wasn't enough.