Leclerc makes spectacular pole position in Barcelona

Charles Leclerc scored an impressive pole position in Saturday's qualifying for the Spanish GP.

The Ferrari driver made a mistake and spun on his first attempt in Q3, but recovered on the final lap to post a 1m18.750s, which gave him a 0.323s lead over his rival Max Verstappen.

The Red Bull world champion was on provisional pole after the first few attempts, but suffered a loss of power shortly after opening his final lap and had to settle for second position.

Carlos Sainz (Ferrari) finished third, while George Russell (Mercedes) beat the second Red Bull of Sergio Perez to fourth place.

Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) is sixth on the grid, followed by his former teammate Valtteri Bottas (Alfa Romeo) and Haas drivers Kevin Magnussen and Mick Schumacher - separated by Daniel Ricciardo's McLaren.

In the final moments of Q2, it appeared that Lando Norris (McLaren) had comfortably moved on to the decisive segment, but his best lap of 1m19.977s was deleted for exceeding track limits at turn 12.

That time would have left Norris eighth and eliminated Schumacher, but the Briton will now start 11th ahead of Esteban Ocon (Alpine).

AlphaTauri's Yuki Tsunoda and Pierre Gasly form the seventh row in 13th and 14th respectively. The Frenchman was lucky to participate in qualifying after technical problems limited him to just one lap in the last free practice.

Zhou Guanyu (Alfa Romeo) starts 15th, but aware that his teammate Valtteri Bottas again showed what was possible, as the Finn was one second faster and moved into Q3.

For Aston Martin, amid all the furor surrounding its updated AMR22 and its resemblance to Red Bull's RB18, qualifying was disastrous.

Sebastian Vettel and Lance Stroll were 16th and 18th, respectively, with the four-time world champion losing a place in Q2 to Ocon by just 0.074s.

Separating the pair, local hero Fernando Alonso (Alpine) got his worst starting position on this track since his debut season with Minardi in 2001.

This was mainly because he was unable to set a fast final lap due to a row of cars going slowly through the penultimate corner.

The Williams duo were on the last row, with almost three-tenths of a second separating Alex Albon and Nicholas Latifi as the Canadian continues to struggle amid doubts about his future with the team.

Check out the grid: