Lewis Hamilton left himself with it all to do at Spanish GP qualifying after a mistake on his opening run.
Having been half a second up on Rosberg through the first two sectors, Hamilton locked up heavily at Turn 10 and ended the lap 0.8s slower than his team-mate. Max Verstappen even managed to split the Mercedes pair after the first attempts, but Hamilton hit back with a 1:22.000 on his final attempt to secure his third pole position of the season.
Rosberg ended up 0.280s adrift having had no response to Hamilton’s final attempt, while Daniel Ricciardo pulled out a stunning final lap to take third place. Ricciardo was 0.4s behind Rosberg and held the same advantage over new team-mate Verstappen who will start from fourth on the grid.
Ferrari’s practice pace never materialised in qualifying and Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel will start from row three, with Raikkonen 0.2s faster than his team-mate but over a second off Hamilton’s pace. Valtteri Bottas took seventh for Williams ahead of Carlos Sainz, Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso, with the home favourite taking a McLaren in to Q3 for the first time since Honda’s return at the start of 2015.
Hamilton had pulled out an impressive lap at the start of Q2 to go over a second quicker than he managed in the first part of qualifying and head the field by 0.6s. Verstappen also impressed with the third fastest time, requiring only one run while Ricciardo was forced to go for a second attempt and finished the session 0.4s adrift of his new team-mate.
Alonso’s slight improvement at the end of Q2 proved crucial as he edged through by just 0.011s ahead of Nico Hulkenberg in 11th place, with Jenson Button 0.15s off Alonso in 12th. Daniil Kvyat was the only Red Bull driver to fail to reach the top ten shootout, qualifying 13th and nearly 0.4s slower than Sainz. Romain Grosjean, Kevin Magnussen and Esteban Gutierrez were the other three drivers to fail to progress.
Q1 saw a surprise as Felipe Massa failed to progress having only completed one run in the first part of qualifying. Williams appeared to pit Massa after his first run believing he was safe, but improvements from a number of drivers saw him bumped down to 18th place. Jolyon Palmer dropped out in 17th when Button jumped ahead of his countryman with his final attempt.
Both Saubers and Manors also dropped out in the first part of the session, with Marcus Ericsson out qualifying Felipe Nasr by over 0.35s while Pascal Wehrlein beat the improving Rio Haryanto by less than 0.2s.