Oscar Piastri pipped McLaren team-mate Lando Norris to pole position at the Dutch Grand Prix.
Piastri turned the tables on Norris, who had appeared the quicker McLaren driver all weekend, by 0.012 seconds as their title battle continues to be intensely close.
The Australian leads Norris by nine points in the championship with 10 races remaining.
Both times were set on their first laps in final qualifying at Zandvoort. Norris was actually quicker than Piastri by 0.004secs on their final runs, but neither driver improved on their initial attempt.
Red Bull’s Max Verstappen took third, 0.263secs slower than Piastri, while Racing Bulls’ Isack Hadjar put in the best performance so far of his impressive rookie season to qualify fourth.
Mercedes’ George Russell took fifth, ahead of the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton. Leclerc had trailed Hamilton pretty much all weekend but beat the seven-time champion by 0.05secs when it mattered.
Piastri said: “That’s the definition of peaking at the right time. There have just been a couple of corners where I have not been able to go faster, I still didn’t do that but I found some time in other places.”
Norris said: “It’s close. It’s been close the whole weekend so easily could go one way or the other. A little bit disappointing to not be on pole but not the end of the world either.”
Home favourite Verstappen, who has won three of the four Dutch Grands Prix since the race returned in 2021, said: “The whole weekend has been difficult and in qualifying it came together a bit more. That was very positive.
“The final change that we made to the car definitely brought it in a nicer operating window and I could push a bit more. For us to be P3 is a great achievement.”
Hadjar’s performance was the stand-out in qualifying, 0.292secs ahead of team-mate Liam Lawson in eighth and ahead of both Mercedes and both Ferraris.
It was all the more eye-opening as he had missed much of Friday practice with a recurring engine problem.
The 20-year-old Frenchman said: “I feel great. Amazing qualifying. Honestly, yesterday was a complete disaster for me. So really unexpected.
“This morning I had a really good feeling but we knew it would be very hard to reach Q3 and actually both of us did. He was really pushing me hard and I put it all on the line on that final lap and it was a great lap so I’m happy.”
Hamilton, who had been so down after qualifying 12th in Hungary at the final race of the first part of the season, was much happier.
The seven-time champion said: “This weekend we have definitely seen progress and that was the goal. Better approach overall. Just everything has been more enjoyable.
“I got the most out of the car in pretty much every session. That last lap, I was already 0.15secs down when I came out of Turn One and I need to look into why. That would have helped. P5 would have been potentially possible but with the wind it is quite tricky for all of us.”
Completing the top 10 behind Lawson were the Williams of Carlos Sainz and Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso, representing the two teams in fifth and sixth at the head of a tight battle for fifth place in the constructors’ championship.
The promise Alonso showed in practice on Friday, when he split the McLarens, faded, as it was always likely to. But he would have been seventh ahead of Hamilton had he managed to repeat the fastest lap he managed in the second session.
The track changed and got slower at the end of the session, and Alonso had run used tyres on his first run in Q3, like everyone bar the McLarens and Verstappen.
He said: “When you run last min Q3, 10th is not the best starting position but it is what we deserved today. Ninth is 0.15secs in front of us so it is not even close. We have a different tyre selection from some other teams and we hope it pays off.”
The Spaniard’s team-mate Lance Stroll crashed on his very first lap of qualifying after putting his right-hand wheels on to the grass approaching the final corner and starts last.-BBC
