Formula One's governing body faced calls to modify qualifying procedures for safety reasons after McLaren's Lewis Hamilton and Heikki Kovalainen were penalised in Malaysia at the weekend. Championship leader Hamilton and his team mate were demoted five places on the starting grid at Sepang for impeding rivals when they slowed to save fuel after completing their final qualifying laps.
The Briton lapped the Albert Park circuit in a searing one minute and 21.164 seconds to cross the line 0.664 seconds clear of Ferrari's Kimi Raikkonen.
Ferrari title rival Sebastian Vettel qualified only ninth.
Lewis Hamilton won the Mexican Grand Prix for Mercedes after a first-lap scare on Sunday but the Briton will have to wait another week to wrap up his sixth Formula One world championship. Hamilton's 10th win of the season, and 83rd of his career, was also a 100th for Mercedes as a constructor.
Verstappen made a clean getaway from pole position and it took Hamilton all but the last four of the 70 laps to catch and pass the 21-year-old Dutchman. Mercedes got the strategy spot on, despite the Briton's reservations.
The German, who will start on pole for the third year in a row in Valencia, will have McLaren's championship leader Lewis Hamilton alongside on the front row.
Real Madrid striker Cristiano Ronaldo took the overseas personality of the year prize.
As the Formula One season moves into its second half Sebastian Vettel's armour suddenly appears to have some chinks after Lewis Hamilton's superb victory left the German in the shade for the second consecutive race in his previously imperious Red Bull.
The key to being a really quick Formula One driver, is to take risks on the racetrack and be in no rush to start a family, according to McLaren's Lewis Hamilton.
The key to being a really quick Formula One driver, is to take risks on the racetrack and be in no rush to start a family, according to McLaren's Lewis Hamilton.
Stage is set for Mumbai's motorsports fans to witness Formula One star Lewis Hamilton scorching the roads of the Bandra Kurla Complex, Mumbai on Sunday.
Lewis Hamilton won the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday to chalk up his fourth victory in a row and wrest the Formula One championship lead from Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg.
Ferrari were the fastest in pre-season testing, raising suspicions that their new SF70H car has closed the chasm between Mercedes and the rest.
Formula One world champion Lewis Hamilton won the Belgian Grand Prix from pole position on Sunday to increase his lead over Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg to 28 points with eight races remaining.
Lewis Hamilton was made to wait for his fifth Formula One world championship, on Sunday, after the Mercedes driver finished only third in a US Grand Prix won by Ferrari veteran Kimi Raikkonen.
Lando Norris won the Austrian Grand Prix and revived his Formula One title bid after fending off championship-leading McLaren team mate Oscar Piastri under race-long pressure on Sunday.
Lewis Hamilton's hopes of a hat-trick of pole positions disappeared at the Chinese Grand Prix on Thursday when McLaren said he would collect a five place penalty on the starting grid for an unscheduled gearbox change.
Lewis Hamilton wrote a personal letter to the head of Formula One's governing body to escape a possible race ban for his Monaco Grand Prix outburst against stewards and rivals.
McLaren questioned Lewis Hamilton's version of events on Friday after the 2008 Formula One champion told an interviewer he had been thrown out of his old team's garages in pre-season testing.
World champion Max Verstappen put Red Bull on pole position for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in dramatic style on Saturday.
Lewis Hamilton celebrated his 50th Formula One victory on Sunday with a pole-to-flag U.S. Grand Prix drive that kept his title hopes alive and trimmed Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg's lead to 26 points with three races remaining. Rosberg, who had been chasing his 10th triumph of the season, finished second on a sunny Texan afternoon with a big crowd but little drama -- even if Hamilton spent much of it worrying about reliability. The straightforward victory was Hamilton's fourth in Texas in five seasons and ended a barren stretch for the triple world champion dating back to his last win in Germany in July.
McLaren's Lewis Hamilton said on Thursday that he missed winning and intended to clamber back on top of the podium in Turkey this weekend. "This weekend obviously I want to get points, but I want to win. I miss winning, so that's my plan," the 23-year-old told reporters at the Istanbul Park circuit.
Australian Oscar Piastri won the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix on Sunday to take the lead in the Formula One world championship
'As soon as I leave the races I'm able to switch off. I've got, obviously other things that I'm doing, and in between, trying to fit in the training, for example, in the last week, has not been easy'
The X Factor judge Nicole Scherzinger is reportedly broken after her split from Formula 1 ace Lewis Hamilton, as she kept breaking down and crying during the three-day sunshine stint in Antigua.
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.
Former champion Nigel Mansell has hailed Lewis Hamilton as the Formula One driver to beat while rejecting comparisons between the 23-year-old Briton and golfer Tiger Woods. "I don't think he is like Tiger Woods at all," the 1992 champion, also a keen golfer, told Britain's Daily Telegraph newspaper on Friday.
The 21-year-old Briton will race for McLaren next year alongside double world champion Fernando Alonso.
Pre-season testing times suggest that Ferrari and McLaren, who won all the races between them last year, are still in a class of their own.
Lewis Hamilton has spoken about his mental and emotional struggles
Monaco's Leclerc, who had started on pole position for the first time, lost power with 10 laps to go while leading and finished third with an extra point for the fastest lap.
Germany's Nico Rosberg celebrated his first Formula One world championship on Sunday after finishing runner-up in a tense Abu Dhabi Grand Prix won by Mercedes team mate Lewis Hamilton amid accusations of 'dirty tricks'.
Britain's George Russell will stand in for Lewis Hamilton at Mercedes for Sunday's Sakhir Grand Prix after being released by Williams.
Reigning World Champion Lewis Hamilton has lashed out at the plans of new qualifying format in the Formula One, saying the drivers should be consulted before changing the rules.
'Vettel disgraced himself, to be honest'
The Briton will be toiling flat out on May Day, the international workers' holiday, to deny his German rival a seventh successive win and fourth of the sport's longest ever season.
Lewis Hamilton's hopes of securing the Formula One title in China this weekend could be scuppered by a video posted on the Internet.
Lewis Hamilton took pole position for the Italian Grand Prix on Saturday with championship-leading Mercedes team mate Nico Rosberg qualifying alongside him on the front row.
'NO problem. Nobody was hurt, which is the most important thing'
Lewis Hamilton cast himself as the Rafael Nadal of Formula One on Thursday, recognising in the Spaniard's epic Wimbledon triumph the same fire that burns within him on the racetrack. Hamilton, now resident in Federer's native Switzerland, compared the beaten world number one to Michael Schumacher, Formula One's now-retired but once dominant seven times champion.
