Lewis Hamilton struggles down in fifth for Bahrain GP opening race as Charles Leclerc takes pole and Verstappen second

FERRARI delivered on their vow to produce a competitive car in 2022 as Charles Leclerc secured a stunning pole in Bahrain.

The Frenchman beat world champion Max Verstappen to P1… but Lewis Hamilton was nowhere to be seen.

Flying Dutchman Verstappen missed out on pole to Leclerc by just 0.1 seconds, with the Ferrari man leading the way with a time of 1 minute 30.5 seconds.

His Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz will start third in the grid, with the other Red Bull, driven by Sergio Perez, in fourth.

It was a miserable day for Hamilton and Mercedes though as the Brit struggled to find any pace, finishing 0.7 seconds off Leclerc’s time.

The seven-time world champ will start Sunday’s GP fifth on the grid.

Hamilton though wasn’t too disheartened with the performance as he told his team: “That’s a great effort guys, keep our heads down and continue to push.”

And things were even worse for team-mate George Russell.

He will start even further back than Hamilton in NINTH – behind Valteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo), Kevin Magnussen (Haas) and Fernando Alonso (Alpine).

Pierre Gasly rounded off the top ten for Alpha Tauri.

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Speaking on taking home pole, Leclerc said: “It feels good. The last two years have been incredibly difficult for the team.

“We were quite hopeful that this new opportunity for us was an opportunity to be back in the front and I think we have worked extremely well as a team to find ourself again in a position to fight for better places.”

Elsewhere Verstappen reacted: “We have a good race car, which at the end of the day is the most important.

“Here you want to be good in qualifying of course but you also really want to make sure your car is working for the race, because the tyres are really struggling a lot more there and it’s a bit different to some other tracks.”