Lewis Hamilton has qualified on pole position for the 2017 Spanish Grand Prix, claiming his 64th career pole position, just one behind Ayrton Senna on 65, and four behind Schumacher (68). Sebastian Vettel qualified second with Valtteri Bottas third.
In the beginning of Q1, Ferrari driver Sebastian Vettel had a slight scare after he seemingly slowed down, and the Ferrari crew told him to stop the car, but he couldn't find any run-off area at the time of the instruction, and kept on going, and after receiving permission from the team, he managed to get the car going again. Romain Grosjean had a spin on his first run, but eventually managed to set a lap time. Dropping out of the session were Marcus Ericsson, Jolyon Palmer, Lance Stroll, Stoffel Vandoorne and Daniil Kvyat.
In Q2, it was Kevin Magnussen, Carlos Sainz, Nico Hulkenberg, Romain Grosjean and Pascal Wehrlein. Fernando Alonso managed to get the McLaren-Honda (against many people's expectation arguably) into Q3.
Then the top ten shootout came. On their first runs, it was Hamilton fastest from Bottas, who was ahead of the Ferraris or Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel. On their second runs, Bottas managed to improve slightly on his lap time, but it wasn't enough to beat Hamilton. Hamilton didn't improve on his own lap, and Vettel was faster than Hamilton in the first two sectors, and it looked like he would claim pole, but a slight mistake in the final sector, meant he qualified just behind Hamilton (0.051s), which was enough for him to qualify on the front row. Kimi Raikkonen qualified fourth, whilst Max Verstappen qualified ahead of Daniel Ricciardo (who qualified in 6th) for Red Bull in 5th. Fernando Alonso managed an impressive 7th place in the McLaren Honda, ahead of both Force Indias of Sergio Perez and Esteban Ocon (who qualified 8th and 10th respectively), and ahead of Williams driver Felipe Massa who qualified 9th.
Starting grid:
Lewis Hamilton - Mercedes
Sebastian Vettel - Ferrari
Valtteri Bottas - Mercedes
Kimi Raikkonen - Ferrari
Max Verstappen - Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer
Daniel Ricciardo - Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer
Fernando Alonso - McLaren-Honda
Sergio Perez - Force India-Mercedes
Felipe Massa - Williams-Mercedes
Esteban Ocon - Force India-Mercedes
Kevin Magnussen - Haas-Ferrari
Carlos Sainz - Toro Rosso
Nico Hulkenberg - Renault
Romain Grosjean - Haas-Ferrari
Pascal Wehrlein - Sauber-Ferrari
Marcus Ericsson - Sauber-Ferrari
Jolyon Palmer - Renault
Lance Stroll - Williams-Mercedes
Stoffel Vandoorne - McLaren-Honda
Daniil Kvyat - Toro Rosso