Lando Norris took a superb pole position for McLaren at the Spanish Grand Prix, beating Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen in a breathless final few seconds of qualifying.

“Oh, what a lap, gorgeous,” said an ecstatic Norris after pipping world championship leader Antonelli by just 0.011 seconds. “Oh, that might be my best one.”

Verstappen was 0.140secs off the pace, as all three moved ahead of Lewis Hamilton’s Ferrari in Madrid.

The seven-time champion had held the top spot after the first runs in the final session.

Hamilton’s team-mate Charles Leclerc was fifth, ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell and the second McLaren of Oscar Piastri.

Norris’ pole came from nowhere. He had been fifth in the first session of qualifying, seventh in the second, and 0.449secs slower than Hamilton’s pace-setting lap after the first runs in the final session.

The world champion said: “I’m shocked. I’m a little bit surprised to be here. It was probably one of the best laps I’ve done ever in my career.

“One of those laps when everything came together. I had a good idea of what I wanted to do, it was whether it came together but my brain let me do it almost perfect. It’s one of those laps when you look at the time and go: ‘Oh, that was pretty good.”

The session had started with predictions of a crash-fest, after drivers had been warning about the high-risk nature of the new Madring street circuit, with tricky entries to corners and walls coming back at the drivers on the exits.

Two red flags during final practice had led some teams to have private sweepstakes as to how many stoppages there would be in qualifying, but the session ran cleanly, with no incidents.

Pole looked to be a battle between Antonelli and the Ferraris, with Verstappen perhaps in the mix.

In the end, the Ferraris faded, as they so often have this year when it really matters, and Norris rose to the front with a breathtaking performance.

“The adrenaline was high on the last lap,” he said. “You have to relax and let it all flow.

“It’s easy to get tense around here. There’s a lot of walls that come at you pretty quickly. I have been feeling pretty good, I just wasn’t relaxed.

“I was pretty much perfect apart from the last corner, where I thought I was in the wall. Everything I wanted to achieve I achieved and it’s one of those moments when I was in that flow state.”

Hamilton, who had crashed at the final corner in practice and missed the final half of the session, did improve on his last lap, but only by 0.06secs and it was not enough to prevent him falling backwards.

He edged Leclerc by just 0.006secs as Ferrari rued yet another tantalising chance slipping through their fingers.

Hamilton said: “I felt pretty awesome in Q3 run one, and then just didn’t have any more grip or power in the last one.”

Norris’ performance was put in perspective by Piastri, who was 0.470secs off his team-mate’s pace.

Russell, meanwhile, could have done with a morale-boosting performance after he finished second to Antonelli in Monza last weekend when the Italian took a stunning win from 19th on the grid.

The Briton had looked more or less on Antonelli’s pace for much of the weekend, even if he clearly lacked the Italian’s fluid ability to let the car run free and flow and slide on corner exits.

And in qualifying the difference was a stark 0.314secs, increasing the prospect of the 66-point gap in the championship between them extending still further on Sunday.

Russell said: “I was in the mix to fight for pole and that last lap of Q3, I just really pushed the limit, was about 0.3secs up and then lost it all towards the end of the lap with the tyres overheating, so that was quite a shame.

“As the track has got faster, I have just been struggling to get the most out of the tyres, I have just been sliding rather than going around the corners faster and I need to understand why that is.”

The top 10 was completed by Red Bull’s Liam Lawson, Alpine’s Franco Colapinto and the Racing Bulls of Arvid Lindblad, the British rookie again impressing.

Local heroes Carlos Sainz and Fernando Alonso were unable to give the Spanish fans much to cheer about as both were knocked out after the first session in 17th and 18th places.

It got worse for Williams’ Sainz because stewards later imposed a three-place grid penalty for impeding Cadillac’s Valtteri Bottas, meaning he will start in 20th.

1. Lando Norris (McLaren) – 1:31.824

2. Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) +0.011

3. Max Verstappen (Red Bull) +0.140

4. Lewis Hamilton (Ferrari) +0.189

5. Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) +0.195

6. George Russell (Mercedes) +0.325

7. Oscar Piastri (McLaren) +0.470

8. Liam Lawson (Red Bull) +0.492

9. Franco Colapinto (Alpine) +1.079

10. Arvid Lindblad (Racing Bulls) +1.217