Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso topped Thursday practice at Jeddah but Red Bull remains the hot favourite ahead of the main event in Saudi Arabia.
Carlos Sainz has withdrawn from the rest of the race weekend with appendicitis and Ferrari has called up junior driver Oliver Bearman who will make his F1 debut as his replacement.
Saudi Arabian GP final practice starts at 1:30pm GMT (4:30pm local time) ahead of qualifying at 5pm GMT (8pm local time).
With that, we'll wrap up this live text coverage of Saudi Arabian GP qualifying. We'll be back tomorrow for the main event, with the pre-race build-up before lights out at 5pm GMT. Until then, go well!
Meanwhile, a fresh twist in the Red Bull saga has emerged, as Helmut Marko has said he might be suspended after the Saudi Arabian GP! The developing story is here.
Verstappen on his first pole in Saudi Arabia: "It was a very good day. We improved the car a little bit overnight and that gave me more confidence to attack the high speed corners. Around here it really depends on how you can get to the limit. Today I felt very comfortable with the car."
Leclerc on his stand-in team-mate Bearman: "First I hope Carlos will recover quickly. On Ollie's side he has done an incredible job obviously with only one session in FP3 and he was straight up to speed and comfortable with the car so it is good. I am happy for him."
Leclerc on another front row: "The first lap in Q3 we tried something different on the preparation laps but it didn't work out for us and then for the second lap I put everything togethe... that was what was in the car today."
Perez on P3: "We didn't get much of an improvement on the second lap [in Q3] so we missed the front row. Overall, Max has done a tremendous lap and that was not possible for me today. But the front row was achievable."
Perez qualifies third which he'll take given his recent qualifying struggles. He has been called to the stewards for failing to follow the maximum delta lap time in Q3, while Bearman has just been cleared for the same offence in Q1 and Q2.
Verstappen's final margin over Leclerc is 0.319s. "That was a very lovely qualifying, the car was on rails," he says over team radio. That's his 34th F1 career pole.
And here come the Red Bulls! Perez takes provisional pole for a few seconds but he is beaten by Verstappen's 1m27.472s. That puts him 0.335s ahead of Perez and half a second faster of Alonso in third. Wow.
"That was a messy session, sorry about that," Bearman says over team radio. He did have some squirrely moments in Q2 including a kiss with the wall but still a solid effort.
For the second time in qualifying Bearman has been requested to see the stewards for not following the maximum delta lap time. It shouldn't risk his qualifying position though. What an effort by young Brit, from getting F2 pole to 11th on the F1 grid in 24 hours.
Tsunoda improves to go eighth, so all eyes on Bearman to see if he can knock Hamilton out of qualifying... no! Bearman's 1m28.642s is just 0.036s slower than the seven-time world champion. That is a terrific effort though.
