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Newly-crowned Formula 1 2024 champion Max Verstappen took his first pole since Austria in June, narrowly defeating George Russell in a close qualifying duel in Qatar.
However, Verstappen and his Red Bull team will face the Qatar Grand Prix stewards, who are investigating him for an alleged breach of Article 33.4 of the F1 sporting regulations, relating to "driving unnecessarily slowly".
UPDATE: Verstappen loses Qatar GP pole: 'Complicated' penalty explained
This appears to relate to a Q3 run-in with pole rival Russell.
Verstappen's RB20 looked a no-hoper through sprint qualifying and the sprint itself, but with changes to the set-up allowed between the sprint and grand prix qualifying, whatever Red Bull did revitalised its weekend.
Only eighth in the sprint, Verstappen was towards the front through all three qualifying segments, and was just 0.045s down on Russell after their first push laps in Q3.
But Russell didn't improve on his second attempt, while Verstappen found exactly a tenth to snipe pole position.
Just before his final push lap, Russell - who was at that point on a flying lap but not a competitive flying lap - went into the gravel avoiding Verstappen, who was moving at a slower pace. Russell called it "a bit of a hairy one".
Verstappen is now under investigation for driving unnecessarily slowly.
McLaren, which needs a 1-2 in the race to guarantee itself the constructors' title, locked out the second row behind the pair but crucially saw off its main rival Ferrari.
Lando Norris had a messy Q3, aborting the sole push on his first run due to catching the gravel at Turn 5, then backing out of his first attempt on his second run before finally delivering a lap good enough for third.
Team-mate Piastri was a tenth off, and three hundredths up on Leclerc.
Both Leclerc (fifth) and his Ferrari team-mate Carlos Sainz (seventh) improved on their second Q3 attempts, but by miniscule margins. Leclerc found 0.033s, while Sainz improved by 0.001s.
Russell's Mercedes stablemate Lewis Hamilton was between them after the first runs and stayed there, ending up four tenths down on Russell - like he had been in sprint qualifying.
Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso, Red Bull's Sergio Perez and Haas's Kevin Magnussen completed a Q3 order covered by 0.980s.
Perez recorded his first Q3 appearance since the Circuit of the Americas - but will have hoped to get closer than nine tenths off Verstappen in the final segment.
Pierre Gasly missed out on Q3 by 0.012s versus Perez and was distraught about it on team radio, describing it as "so annoying".
He was followed in the order by the two Saubers, which both escaped Q1 for the first time since the Spanish Grand Prix.
Zhou Guanyu outqualfiied Valtteri Bottas by two tenths, with Bottas left puzzled by his performance.
"I don't quite get where the pace went. Like, from my side, there was nothing more," he told Sauber.
RB's Yuki Tsunoda and Aston Martin's Lance Stroll completed the Q2 order, Stroll trailing Alonso by seven tenths in the relevant session.
Alex Albon's Q2 spot was yanked away at the last moment in the first segment by Tsunoda's improvement, consigning Albon to 16th on the grid by 0.026s.
Tsunoda's team-mate Liam Lawson was half a tenth back from the Japanese driver in that session in 17th, while Nico Hulkenberg followed up his sprint heroics with 18th place.
Lawson complained that an Aston - which he thought was Alonso's but his race engineer then told him was Stroll's - "purposely slowed" after aborting a flying lap and compromised him, though onboard footage showed no real interference.
Hulkenberg was over half a second back from team-mate Magnussen in Q1, and was told by Haas that "we got something wrong" - seemingly in regards to battery 'state of charge'.
Albon's Williams team-mate Franco Colapinto was much closer than in sprint qualifying - in which he had run an older-spec front suspension before being brought back up to spec for Saturday's action.
But he was still 19th in the end, two tenths down on Albon, with only Alpine's Esteban Ocon - whose deeply difficult single-lap form in his final races for the team continued - behind.
Ocon felt his lap was "clean" and normally should've been "quite easily" enough to progress.
