British Grand Prix: Lewis Hamilton beats Kimi Antonelli to pole for Silverstone sprint race
Ferrari's Lewis Hamilton pipped Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli to a stunning pole position for the sprint race at the British Grand Prix.
Hamilton, a record nine-time winner of his home race, took top spot from the championship leader by just 0.011 seconds.
Red Bull's Max Verstappen was third fastest, but 0.321secs off the pace.
Mercedes' George Russell, 40 points adrift of Antonelli in the championship, was a disappointing fifth behind Ferrari's Charles Leclerc.
McLaren's Lando Norris, the world champion and winner of this grand prix last year, was sixth fastest ahead of team-mate Oscar Piastri.
Red Bull's Isack Hadjar and the Racing Bulls of Liam Lawson and British rookie Arvid Lindblad completed the top 10.
The sprint race at Silverstone takes place at 12:00 BST on Saturday.
The packed grandstands of about 150,000 fans cheered Hamilton raucously as he crossed the line and moved ahead of Antonelli.
Hamilton said: "Wow. OK. I like it. I love this place. I love this crowd. I can't express to you how big a dream it is, and the flow you can get into around this place if you can get the set-up in the right place.
"We're ahead of Mercedes. They have so much power, these guys. We did not expect we would be competing for the front row, so it's an amazing surprise. I'm ecstatic."
Ferrari had a difficult race last weekend in Austria, despite Hamilton taking his first win for his new team in Barcelona the race before that, but the seven-time champion said some small upgrades to the car had helped them get back on top.
"We brought some tiny bits here," he said. "I am really pleased to get pole. It was only 10 milliseconds or something like that and the team really deserve it."
Antonelli said: "It was so close and it was a shame. There was a little bit left on the table but it was a decent lap. Congrats to Lewis and we focus on tomorrow now. Ferrari have done an incredible step forward so it is going to be incredibly tough. Lewis is in great form. We like the challenge. We will go for it."
Verstappen said he thought Hamilton and Antonelli "look a bit quick" to challenge in the sprint.
"It was very close, it could easily have been P3 or P6/7. But we are on the good side. We are still not where we want to be. A few things to figure out to find more lap time and we will try to do that after the sprint."
Leclerc was 0.327secs behind Hamilton and said he was still trying to understand why he was not finding himself as comfortable in the new car as his team-mate.
"Lewis is more often at 100% of the potential of the car, which I'm not," Leclerc said. "I have to work on everything, really.
"I am struggling to be consistent at my 100%. I just don't feel the car as well as I want.
"We are extremely surprised in general. We were expecting a much bigger gap to the cars in front."
Russell, who needs a good run of races to narrow the gap to Antonelli, was a similar margin adrift - 0.346secs behind the Italian.
"Story of the year, always on the back foot. Usually in Q3 I can make a step but today it wasn't the case. We need to understand why that is," Russell said.
"Very surprised by the pace of Ferrari. They have been on the back foot with the PU and energy management and today they look the best. We've always known they have a great chassis. Some things are not quite making sense. Ferrari have had the upper hand all day."