Qualifying facts and stats: Hamilton takes his 100th pole – and ties another Schumacher record

After Lewis Hamilton became a pole-position centurion, taking P1 by just 0.036s over Max Verstappen, we look at the pertinent facts and stats from a scintillating Saturday of qualifying in Spain.

• Hamilton reached 100 pole positions and tied Michael Schumacher’s circuit record, with his sixth pole at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya.

• Mercedes' 129th pole position passes Williams for third on the all-time pole table (behind Ferrari and McLaren).

REPORT AND HIGHLIGHTS: Hamilton beats Verstappen to take 100th career pole in Spain

• Verstappen took P2 and put Red Bull on the front row in Spain for the first time since 2011.

• For only the second time time since 2012, Mercedes do not have a front row lockout in Spain.

• Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc made it his best-ever Spanish GP start with P4 and starts fourth for the third time in four races in 2021.

• Esteban Ocon took P5 – his best start since the soaking Styrian GP, 19 races ago in July 2020. The Frenchman out-qualified Fernando Alonso for the third consecutive race and this time by a margin of 0.567s.

• Carlos Sainz took P6 for Ferrari, his best Spanish GP start since he took fifth as a Toro Rosso rookie in 2015.

• McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo is in the top-10 on the grid in Spain for the first time since 2018.

READ MORE: Ferrari duo hoping to fend off McLaren on race day after Leclerc qualifies a brilliant P4 in Spain

• Sergio Perez, P8, qualified 0.924s slower than team mate Verstappen.

• By qualifying P9, Lando Norris is not seventh on the grid for the first time in 2021. But by topping Q1, he put McLaren top of a qualifying session for the first time since Q1 at the 2019 US Grand Prix.

• Racing Point were fourth and fifth on the grid last year but in their new guise as Aston Martin, Lance Stroll starts 11th and Sebastian Vettel 13th.

• For the first time in seven races, AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly failed to reach Q3.

• Antonio Giovinazzi and George Russell progressed from Q1 in Spain for the first time in their F1 careers.

READ MORE: 100th pole ‘feels like one of the first’, says Hamilton as he explains how he overcame balance issues to edge Verstappen

• AlphaTauri rookie Yuki Tsunoda was out in Q1 for the second time this season, but missed Q2 by 0.007s today. Alfa Romeo’s Kimi Raikkonen was out in Q1 for the second time this season too.

• Haas managed to out-qualify a non-Haas driver on pace for the first time in 2021 as Mick Schumacher out-qualified Williams’ Nicholas Latifi.

• And there were big margins between the Haas drivers, Nikita Mazepin qualifying 0.690s slower than Schumacher. Similarly, at Williams, Latifi was 0.774s slower than Russell.