Lewis Hamilton will start tomorrow's Spanish Grand Prix from fifth on the grid and his Scuderia Ferrari HP team-mate Charles Leclerc will line up seventh.

Behind the McLaren pair, qualifying was fought out to the thousandths of a second and the race looks like being very open to possibilities, given the pace of the SF-25s and, in Charles' case, his tyre choice, which will be different to the majority of drivers around him.

Both SF-25s went with two sets of Softs in the first phase, although Charles pitted after his preparation lap, as by then he had done enough to make the cut. It took both drivers just one run to get out of Q2 and so Lewis had two sets of Softs for the final part. Charles had opted to save two sets of Mediums for the race, using two of the Soft in this morning's final free practice. He therefore had just one set of new Softs and the one he had used for just one lap in Q1. He immediately went with the new set, posting a time of 1'12"131, which at the time put him third. Hamilton's lap was 1'12"433. Leclerc chose to end his session there, thus saving for the race the set used in Q1, but Lewis went out again, improving his time helped by the drop in track temperature prompted by cloud cover in the final two minutes. He got down to 1'12"045, to secure fifth place on the grid, while Charles dropped to seventh.

From what was seen in free practice, the SF-25 seems to have a strong pace, better than some of the competition and Charles can count on a different tyre strategy to those around of him. The race starts at 15 CEST and the Monegasque will have to wait to the end of the 66 laps of the Barcelona-Catalunya circuit, equivalent to 307.236 kilometres, to find out if he made the right choice.

Lewis Hamilton: FP3 wasn't ideal, but P5 in quali shows the progress we've made since the start of the triple-header. The car felt good, so I'm going all in tomorrow, aiming for a podium finish. The field's tight, just a few tenths between the top ten, so it's going to be a proper fight. There's still work to do tonight, but we'll stay focused and make sure we're ready for the race.

Charles Leclerc: I knew it would be a difficult qualifying. We only had 4 new sets of Softs for this qualifying session compared to others who had 5, but we made that choice and I think we can put up a good fight starting from P7 tomorrow. Our race pace looks good and we have a different selection of tyres available to us compared to those starting around us, so we will see if our decision pays off.

Fred Vasseur: From the start of the weekend, we made a strategic decision with Charles to prioritise the race, choosing to keep two sets of Medium tyres and today we also opted to keep one set of Softs for the race that had only done an out-in lap, so we decided to sacrifice some performance in qualifying. As for his actual grid position, it's probable he wasn't helped by the clouds that appeared at the very end of the session. We believe this decision will pay off in the race given the expected high temperatures and high tyre degradation.

As for Lewis, I think qualifying went pretty well for him, even if we had to use two sets of Softs early in the session. He put together a good lap in Q2, immediately making the cut and his Q3 was solid so we can expect a good race from him.

Check out our Saturday gallery from Barcelona here.