The Scuderia Ferrari HP duo of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton will start tomorrow's Bahrain Grand Prix from third and ninth places on the grid respectively.

For the Monegasque, it's his best qualifying of the season, having managed to get the most out of his SF-25 all the way from the start of Q1 to the end of Q3. Tomorrow, although it won't be easy, his target is to finish on the podium. Lewis had a less smooth time of it in Q3, but there is more to come from the car, so he can aim to move up the order.

Charles got through Q1 easily enough, but Lewis needed to use a second set of Softs. Q2 was more chaotic because of the red flag following Esteban Ocon's crash into the barriers at turn 3. Charles needed two sets of new Softs to make the cut to the final part, while Lewis used just one, so they both had to tackle the final part with just one new set each. On their first run on used tyres, Leclerc and Hamilton posted times of 1'31"355 and 1'31"410 respectively, which put them provisionally fourth and fifth, but Lewis' time was disallowed for a track limits infringement. On his final run on new Softs, Charles put in a brilliant lap and stopped the clocks in 1'30"175 to claim third place. Lewis' only valid lap time, a 1'30"772, put him ninth on the time sheet.

Tonight, the team will study the data in depth to prepare for the race: with the updates introduced this weekend, the SF-25 seems to have reasonable pace, but the gaps to the competition are very small and every detail can make the difference. It looks like being a two-stop race, in which tyre management, especially if it is as hot as it was during qualifying, will play a key role. Lewis will need to be aggressive off the line to try and make up some places and not get stuck behind slower cars. Overtaking is possible here and the 57 lap, 308.238 kilometre race, should be very entertaining. It starts at 19 local (18 CEST).

Charles Leclerc: I didn't expect this result in qualifying, but I think we have worked very well in the last few weeks and this is the reward. We explored quite a few set-ups and I think I've found a direction that enables me to better extract the potential from the car. In Q3 the lap on scrubbed tyres wasn't great, but the feeling in the car was good and I knew I had the potential to do a much better lap although I didn't expect it to be good enough for P3. It's good to see that we are making progress and I want to thank the team for the great job done on track and in Maranello to bring the upgrade to this race. Everything worked as expected and now we have to focus on the race. It won't be easy to keep this position but we will try and get a good result, as it would be a boost for the whole team.

Lewis Hamilton: It wasn't the day I was hoping for. The changes made overnight set us back in FP3, and while we applied further setup adjustments ahead of qualifying it just didn't come together and I also didn't find the performance window I needed. Credit to Charles, who did a great job out there. On a positive note, the race pace looked promising yesterday, and with a long race ahead, there's still an opportunity to make progress. We'll analyse the learnings overnight and come back stronger. A big thank you to the team for their continued efforts — we'll keep pushing.

Fred Vasseur: Today's three qualifying sessions were quite chaotic for everyone because these cars are very sensitive to the wind and to track temperature. On our side, I think we have made good progress and Charles was able to get everything out of the car to finish a strong P3. Lewis struggled on his last lap in Q3, after having been on the pace in the first two parts.

For the race tomorrow, with Charles' grid position, we have to be ambitious but I think Lewis also has the potential to come back and score good points. One unknown factor is that, so far, our long runs have been done in very hot conditions and in the race it will be much cooler. Charles has two sets of Mediums which could be an advantage as we have seen a lot more tyre degradation than at the first three races, run on tracks that had been completely or partially resurfaced. As for the new floor, I think we will have to wait until we run it also in Jeddah next week to have a clearer picture of what it brings us.

Check out our Saturday gallery from Manama here.