The Latest Breaking News from Aston Martin

The team got off to a disappointing start relative to last year in Bahrain, with Fernando Alonso slipping back to ninth from an unexpectedly strong sixth place on the grid, and Lance Stroll recovering to 10th after a first-corner incident.

In an extremely tight qualifying battle, Alonso's final Q3 lap was good for sixth, 0.363s off polesitter Max Verstappen and only half a tenth behind George Russell in third. But Alonso slid down the order to finish ninth in the race, being unable to keep up with the Mercedes of Lewis…

The Prototype Winter Series rejoins the GTWS, GT4WS and Formula Winter Series this weekend for the first time since the Portimao rounds in January, to set up a schedule featuring a bumper total of 11 races across Saturday and Sunday.

See the full qualifying results and starting lineup for the Formula 1 season opener in Bahrain.

After all the talk and posturing of pre-season testing and practice, the true pace of the grid was revealed with Red Bull’s Verstappen taking his 33rd career F1 pole by beating Charles Leclerc.

With all the attention on the Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner, the world champion made the perfect start to his title defence

In an extremely tight Q3 field, Alonso's 1m29.542s yielded him sixth on Saturday's grid.

The reigning champion had taken a back seat during the opening two stages of qualifying but, when it came down to Q3, he set a demanding benchmark of a 1m29.421s - and then beat his own effort amid the final runs to settle on a 1m29.179s.

Verstappen will start ahead of Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) and George Russell (Mercedes) after the one-hour qualifying session, which is split into three segments with five cars each being knocked out in Q1 and Q2 before the top-10 shootout of Q3.