F1 2017: Valtteri Bottas ends Hamilton pole streak at Bahrain Grand Prix

With the F1 world and motorsport still buzzing about Fernando Alonso's announcement of him missing the Monaco Grand Prix on May 28 to compete at the Indianapolis 500 with McLaren-Honda, the Grand Prix circus got back to the absorbing battle between Mercedes and Ferrari for the FIA Formula 1 World Championship.

However, if the two most prolific F1 drivers of their generation and their fans thought that they would battle for the drivers' world championship all by themselves, Valtteri Bottas shot a reminder to both his Mercedes AMG F1 teammate Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel in qualifying for the Bahrain Grand Prix. The Finn, who was drafted by world champion Mercedes to replace the retiring Nico Rosberg, claimed his first ever pole position since his F1 debut in 2013.

Hamilton had claimed pole position for the opening two races of the season in Australia and China and also in the final four races of the 2016 season.

Racing for Mercedes is the first time that Bottas has ever been behind the wheel of a front running car, and so far he has scored a third place in the opening race in Melbourne followed by sixth place in China following a mistake that saw him spin while behind a safety car.

Keen to make up for the disappointment of Shanghai and to make himself a factor in this year's world championship battle, the Finn set a lap of 1min28.769sec around the 15-turn, 5.412km Bahrain International Circuit in Sakhir.

The lap was 0.023 seconds faster than Hamilton's best effort and gave Mercedes its first front row lockout of the season.

Owing to Mercedes invariably having an extra turn of speed over its rivals due to special engine modes used only in qualifying, the duo were almost half a second ahead of third placed Vettel whose best effort was 1min29.247sec.

RICCIARDO AND HULKENBERG IMPRESS
Preventing Ferrari from locking out the second row of the starting grid, however, was Red Bull-Tag Heuer's (Renault) Daniel Ricciardo who pipped Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen to fourth by just 0.022 seconds. Ricciardo's feat is impressive given Red Bull's current defecit to Mercedes and Ferrari.

The formerly dominant Red Bull team are also represented by Max Verstappen in sixth place, 0.918 seconds off Bottas' pole position time.

Just over a tenth and a half of a second behind Verstappen was the factory Renault team's Nico Hulkenberg in seventh place. With the top seven qualifiers being separated by just 1.073 seconds, the qualifying session was one of the closest ever since the start of the V-6 turbo-hybrid engine formula in 2014 that has been utterly dominated by Mercedes AMG F1.

Williams-Mercedes' Felipe Massa, Haas-Ferrari's Romain Grosjean and Renault's Jolyon Palmer completed the top ten of the starting grid, while the other ten drivers were eliminated in the first two of three segments of qualifying.