Formula One qualifying took place at the the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, Barcelona, Spain on Thursday June 3rd with Red Bull's Max Verstappen grabbing the pole position followed the Ferrari of Spaniard Carlos Sainz who was 0.462 seconds slower than Verstappen's qualifying time of 1:12.272 seconds.

The pole position was the Dutch driver's first at the Spanish Grand Prix. Verstappen won the Grand Prix last year.

"Qualifying started off tricky, you needed to be on the track at the right time, not making any mistakes. Going into Q3 I knew there was good potential left in the car so I could finally push it to the limit," said Verstappen. "The first run was really quick, then of course we went out again for the second run, that would have been even better, but I was told to abort the lap to save the tyres."

McLaren's Lando Norris gave a lift to his team which struggled on Friday and will start P3.

"After FP1 we said it was probably one of our worst FP1s of the season in terms of pace," said Norris. "So to be sat here today in P3, I think it's quite a big surprise for all of us.

"I think apart from maybe Bahrain this was our worst Friday of the season," he continued. "On Friday we all sat down and were thinking it was going to be tough to get out of Q1."

Alpine's Pierre Gasly took P4 but was eventually penalised six grid positions for impeding both Max Verstappen and Carlos Sainz during the qualifying session.

Lewis Hamilton, whose record of nine consecutive front row starts, occurred at Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya, qualified in P5 and will start in P4.

Aston Martin's Lance Stroll had to be smiling on Saturday after qualifying P6 and will start P5.

"It was quite a challenging qualifying session with a slightly damp and green track making Q1 especially difficult for all the teams," said Mike Krack, Aston-Martin Team Principal, adding "Lance had a clean session, kept his head down, and recovered well from a difficult day of practice yesterday. He felt there was a bit more performance to come, but we should not be disappointed with getting both cars into Q3."

Stroll's teammate, Fernando Alonzo, a native of Spain, qualified P9 and will start in P8.

Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc did not get through Q1 and qualified a shocking, P19. Leclerc sat on the pole at last year's Spanish Grand Prix.

"Through the right-hand corners the feeling was very similar to this morning," said Leclerc after qualifying, "but there's just something off in the left-hand corners that we need to analyse and understand because it was very far off what I expected."

Red Bull driver Sergio Perez and Mercedes Racing's George Russell did not make it out of Q2.

Pos	Driver		Team		Time		Gap

1	Verstappen	Red Bull	1:12.272	144.145 mph
2	Sainz		Ferrari		1:12.734	0.462
3	Norris		McLaren		1:12.792	0.520
4	Gasly		Alpine		1:12.816	0.544
5	Hamilton	Mercedes	1:12.818	0.546
6	Stroll		Aston Martin	1:12.994	0.722
7	Ocon		Alpine		1:13.083	0.811
8	Hulkenberg	Haas		1:13.229	0.957
9	Alonso		Aston Martin	1:13.507	1.235
10	Piastri		McLaren		1:13.682	1.410
11	Perez		Red Bull	1:13.334	
12	Russell		Mercedes	1:13.447	
13	Zhou		Alfa Romeo	1:13.521	
14	de Vries	AlphaTauri	1:14.083	
15	Tsunoda		AlphaTauri	1:14.477	
16	Bottas		Alfa Romeo	1:13.977	
17	Magnussen	Haas		1:14.042	
18	Albon		Williams	1:14.063	
19	Leclerc		Ferrari		1:14.079	
20	Sargeant	Williams	

(image provided by Alfa Romeo F1 Team KICK)