Vettel beats Hamilton to Canada pole, ending 17-race drought

Sebastian Vettel fought back to beat Lewis Hamilton in the final stage of qualifying for the Canadian Grand Prix on Saturday in Montreal and take his first pole position in 17 races.

After topping FP3 on Saturday morning, Vettel managed to carry his pace through to qualifying, but was two-tenths of a second down on Mercedes' Hamilton after the first runs in Q3.

But the four-time world champion managed to turn things around and nail his final lap to put in a time of 1m10.240s, edging out Hamilton by 0.206 seconds for his first pole since last year's German Grand Prix after the Mercedes driver made a costly error at the hairpin, running wide and losing time.

Charles Leclerc finished six-tenths of a second back from his teammate in P3 for Ferrari, while Daniel Ricciardo scored his best qualifying result of the year for Renault as he took fourth place.

Pierre Gasly led Red Bull's charge in fifth ahead of Valtteri Bottas, who spun on his first Q3 lap and struggled in the closing stages of the session, leaving him sixth overall for Mercedes. Nico Hulkenberg qualified seventh for Renault ahead of the McLaren duo of Lando Norris and Carlos Sainz in eighth and ninth respectively.

Despite finishing qualifying in 10th place, Kevin Magnussen suffered a huge crash in Q2 that meant he was unable to take part in the final session. Coming through the final chicane, Magnussen tapped the Wall of Champions with his rear-right wheel before his car speared across the track and slammed into the pit wall, causing a significant amount of damage to the Haas VF-19.

Magnussen’s crash prevented a number of drivers from posting a quick lap time at the end of Q2, most notably Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. After struggling with traffic on Medium tyres on his first run, Verstappen switched to Softs in a bid to move up from 11th, only for the crash to stop him from improving his time. The setback marked Verstappen’s first Q2 exit of the year, as well as making it the first time he has been outqualified by teammate Gasly at Red Bull.

Toro Rosso drivers Daniil Kvyat and Alexander Albon both dropped out in Q2, finishing 12th and 14th, with Alfa Romeo’s Antonio Giovinazzi splitting the pair in P13.

While Magnussen was able to still advance to Q3 despite the shunt, it ruined Haas teammate Romain Grosjean’s session, with the Frenchman forced to back off as he came to the crash site to leave him down in P15.

Racing Point suffered a double Q1 elimination as both Sergio Perez and Lance Stroll failed to find enough time on their final runs to squeeze through to the second stage of qualifying, finishing 16th and 18th respectively. Despite his struggles, Perez was able to maintain his 100 percent qualifying record over Stroll in 2019, who in turn was eliminated in Q1 for the 11th race in a row.

Kimi Raikkonen was the surprise drop-out in Q1 as a slow middle sector on his final flying lap left him P17 overall, with teammate Giovinazzi knocking him out after a late improvement.

Williams remained rooted to the back of the grid as George Russell and Robert Kubica filled out the final two positions in 19th and 20th. Russell outqualified 2008 Canada winner Kubica by seven-tenths of a second, but was still 1.4 seconds adrift from the rest of the pack.