Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris topped the times for McLaren as four red flags, two caused by trackside grass fires, wreaked havoc with the second practice session for the Japanese Grand Prix on Friday.
Australian Piastri, winner of four of the last five races, lapped the Imola circuit with a fastest time of one minute 16.545 seconds on the softest tyre compound with Norris 0.032 slower on a sunny afternoon.
Formula One leader Oscar Piastri put his McLaren on pole position for the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix at Imola on Saturday
Days after the Red Bull driver and partner Kelly Piquet welcomed daughter Lily, his first child, the four-times champion set a blistering lap of one minute 26.204 seconds around the Hard Rock Stadium.
Carlos Sainz completed a double race distance for previously struggling Williams and pushed his Ferrari successor Lewis Hamilton off the top of the testing
Drivers returned to the pits, under a darkening sky, with engineers using torches in the garages before back-up generators came on and the session resumed about an hour later.
McLaren's Oscar Piastri celebrated pole position for the Bahrain Grand Prix, his 50th Formula One race, while dejected championship-leading teammate Lando Norris qualified sixth and said he had been "clueless on track".
McLaren's Oscar Piastri seized the first proper pole position of his Formula One career at the Chinese Grand Prix on Saturday with the fastest lap yet around the Shanghai International Circuit.
Lewis Hamilton smashed the Shanghai circuit lap record on his way to a stunning first sprint race pole for Ferrari in China on Friday.
World champion Max Verstappen put Red Bull on pole position for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in dramatic style on Saturday.
The win from fourth on the grid was Australian Oscar Piastri's third in a row, after Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, and fourth of the season. McLaren have so far been beaten only once.
Ferrari's underwhelming pace was a surprise to their rivals and to Hamilton, whose quickest lap in the final qualifying session (Q3) was nearly nine-tenths of a second slower than Norris's.
Lewis Hamilton will launch his bid to win the drivers' championship at a third F1 team when he makes his much-anticipated debut for Ferrari in the season-opening Australian Grand Prix.
McLaren's Lando Norris swept to victory in a wet and wild Australian Grand Prix on Sunday, holding off defending champion Max Verstappen in a white-knuckle finish to a Formula One season-opener littered with crashes and safety cars.
Lando Norris led a McLaren front row sweep in qualifying for the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix on Saturday
Lewis Hamilton will bring down the curtain on his Mercedes career in Abu Dhabi on Sunday as his past and future Formula One teams, McLaren and Ferrari, fight for a constructors' title to end years of waiting.
Jehan Daruvala swept to a double podium finish in the Saudi Arabian round of the Formula 2 Championship, in Jeddah, on Monday.
Summary of sports events and persons who made news on Sunday.
Reigning world champion Marc Marquez won a season record-equalling 12th MotoGP race with victory at the Malaysian Grand Prix on Sunday.
Valentino Rossi rolled back the years to win his sixth premier class Australian Grand Prix on Sunday after world champion Marc Marquez's cruise to a pole-to-flag victory was ended suddenly by a crash on lap 18.
World champion Marc Marquez underlined his dominance of MotoGP when he swept to a record-equalling 12th pole position of the season on a good day for Spain at the Australian Grand Prix on Saturday.
