Bearman went into the opening round of knockout qualifying on the backfoot having missed Friday's second practice session while repairs were made to his VF-25 - an off in first practice sidelining the rookie with just 12 laps to his credit.

The Brit's woes were compounded further by a second off on his first flying run in Saturday's final practice - Bearman's session over in the gravel at Turn 11. While the car was unscathed, a gearbox related issue ultimately thwarted Bearman's qualifying effort - the 19-year-old's Q1 session ending in the garage with no time set.

Ocon sampled three sets of Pirelli's P Zero Red softs in Q1 - the Frenchman banking an opening lap of 1:17.517. Clocking a 1:17.147 on his second set - but failing to better it on a final set of fresh rubber, Ocon subsequently exited qualifying in P19.

McLaren locked out the front row of the grid for Sunday's 58-lap race with Lando Norris (1:15.096) pipping hometown favorite Oscar Piastri (1:15.180) to the pole position.

Ollie Bearman: "It's disappointing to not get a lap on the board but it's been a messy weekend so far. I think tomorrow will be interesting, and then we can move on. As a team we've struggled a little bit and of course I haven't run all weekend, and that's made it tough for the team to understand as they've been only running one car, so I can only apologize to the team."

Esteban Ocon: "It's been difficult, a bit of a surprise to be honest compared to where we looked in testing. Historically, it's been a difficult track for the team, but we didn't expect to be this far back. We've made steps in each session which is encouraging, but we clearly need more. Tomorrow, we'll go again and try to get the maximum out of the opportunity with rain forecast."

Ayao Komatsu, Team Principal: "Another difficult day with the performance issue we had yesterday. We worked as much as possible to improve the car, which we did, but ultimately it wasn't good enough. We're lacking a lot in high-speed corners, and we didn't see that coming from Bahrain testing, but this is the reality currently and we need to find a solution as quickly as possible. It's of course going to be helpful if it's raining because if it's dry, we simply don't have pace. With our understanding of the issue, a wet race may help, but we'll put everything into it tomorrow - we won't give up."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Albert Park here.