Ferrari lock out front row at Suzuka as Sebastian Vettel takes pole position!

The German made it five pole positions at Suzuka after doing so four times in a row between 2009 and 2012 and he also made it five pole positions in a row for Ferrari this season, with teammate Charles Leclerc, who finished second, taking the previous four.

Mercedes weren't at the races on Sunday morning in Suzuka, with Valtteri Bottas beating Lewis Hamilton to P3 and with the Red Bull of Max Verstappen half a second behind in P5.

Should Mercedes out-score Ferrari by 15 points during the race later today, the Silver Arrows would take their sixth constructors' championship in a row at Suzuka, but that looks a tough task now with the two red cars starting in front of them.

Q1

Before anyone was able to set a time in Q1, there were already two red flags. At the end of his out lap, Williams' Robert Kubica went onto the grass in the final turn that leads onto the main straight and slammed into the wall hard, completely totalling his FW42. After it had been cleaned up, it was the Haas of Kevin Magnussen who was in that same barrier just four minutes after the green flag waved again. The very heavy winds at the track in the wake of typhoon Hagibis, which passed through the circuit yesterday, caught both drivers off-guard.

Leclerc topped the timesheets, with Hamilton and Max Verstappen following suit and Lando Norris in P4 for McLaren. Apart from the two drivers who had crashed, George Russell, Sergio Pérez and, most notably, Daniel Ricciardo got eliminated in Q1. For Pérez, it was just the second time in seventeen weekends that he got beaten by teammate Lance Stroll, who made it to Q2 safely.

Q2

Bottas was the one who set the pace in the second of the three sessions, with Hamilton following the Finn a tenth behind. Alex Albon was in third, beating both Ferrari's as well as Verstappen, with both McLarens leading the midfield. Pierre Gasly made it back-to-back years in Q3 for Toro Rosso and Romain Grosjean was the final driver to make it into Q3 for Haas.

Down in the elimination zone, it was the third time in a row Antonio Giovinazzi out-qualified Kimi Raikkonen for Alfa Romeo, although both drivers didn't make it through to the final shoot-out: P11 for the Italian, P13 for the 2007 champion. The meat of that Alfa sandwich was Stroll, who couldn't quite make his second Q3-appearance of the season, and Daniil Kvyat was in P14. Finally, Nico Hülkenberg was last in Q2, with the German having some major issues to his power unit as he had to nurse his RS19 back to the pitlane without getting a competitive time. A nightmare morning for Renault, safe to say.

Q3

In the first of the two runs in Q3, Bottas set the pace early-on, beating Hamilton by a tenth of a second. However, then came the Ferrari's, with Leclerc first and then Vettel putting their SF90's at the top of the charts with a fantastic lap. He had three-tenths of daylight between himself and Leclerc in P2, with the Mercedes cars two-tenths behind.

In the second run, both Leclerc and Vettel improved on their times as the Mercedes cars crept closer, with Verstappen ending over half a second behind Hamilton in P4. Vettel has now beaten Leclerc in qualifying for the first time in ten weekends.

Also, Vettel continues the streak of qualifying on Sundays, with every qualifying session ever held on Sunday being won by Germans!

The midfield was once again led by McLaren, with Sainz beating Norris to P7 and with Gasly finishing ninth ahead of Grosjean in tenth.