Red Bull's Mexican driver Sergio Perez clinched his first career pole position on Saturday at the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in Jiddah as Mick Schumacher suffered a horrific crash, luckily without any serious injuries.
Perez claimed the pole by beating Ferrari's Bahrain race winner Charles Leclerc by a mere 0.025 of a second on the Jeddah Corniche street circuit, with Carlos Sainz third in the other Ferrari and Perez' teammate Max Verstappen, the reigning world champion, fourth.
"What a lap, unbelievable," Perez said after the session. "I can do a thousand laps and I don't think I can beat that lap. We were not really expecting to match the Ferraris on qualifying. Hopefully we beat them tomorrow," added the 32-year-old who has two F1 career wins.
Hamilton had trailed all weekend after a lucky third-place finish at last week's season-opener and the Mercedes driver went out in Q1 for the first time since Brazil 2017, in 16th by 0.033 of a second.
Schumacher crashed heavily in turn 12 with his Haas heavily damaged, and the German was driven away in an ambulance. Haas said later he was "physically in a good condition" but flown to hospital "for further precautionary check-ups."
In his second season in Formula One, Schumacher bounced off the Jeddah street circuit barrier at around 240 to 270 kph (150 - 167 mph) after losing control of his car when clipping a kerb.
Medics were on the scene quickly, lifting him out of the wreckage of his stricken car into an ambulance. His car was snapped in two, the rear end, including engine and gearbox, breaking away from the main monocoque and survival cell on impact.
The 23-year-old son of German F1 legend Michael Schumacher was reported to have been able to remove his own gloves as he departed in an ambulance.
Haas later added that Schumacher appeared "physically fine" and had spoken to his mother, Corrina. In a statement, F1's governing body the FIA, confirmed that an assessment at the medical center "revealed no injuries."
It added that Schumacher "has been transferred to King Fahd Armed Forces Hospital, Jeddah, for precautionary checks."
"Maybe he just tried a little bit too hard," said team boss Guenther Steiner. "Here if you make an error there's no run-off. It's walls."
Steiner cast doubt on Schumacher being able to take part in the race.
"We need to see after the scans how he is doing, how the car is and then we decide what we do tomorrow," added the Italian. "At some stage it's maybe better not to start but I don't know yet, I don't want to anticipate that we don't start.
"We are considering everything for tomorrow. We have to see the car, which position we are in with spare parts.
"The car, there will be nothing left – everything needs to go back to be checked anyway after an impact like this so you need to build a complete new car," he explained.
It was the second red flag in the session following an earlier high-speed collision by Williams' Nicholas Latifi in Q1. The Canadian escaped unhurt.
The crash came toward the end of a Q2 session, which in a major shock, did not feature Hamilton who was knocked out of the first qualifying run for the first time since 2017.
Mercedes' seven-time world champion has 103 poles to his name, but in a major upset will start Sunday's race from toward the rear of the grid.
As Q1 drew to a close Hamilton was languishing in 16th with only the top 15 progressing, but failed to make it out of the drop zone with his last flying lap.
He was knocked out of Q1 in Brazil five years ago after a crash but the last time he failed to progress to Q2 on pace alone was at the British Grand Prix in 2009.
Hamilton had struggled throughout practice in his "bouncing" new Mercedes, but new teammate George Russell appeared to overcome that challenge as he progressed with the fourth-best time.
"I struggled with the balance of the car, not where I want to be," Hamilton told Sky Sports. "Unfortunately just went the wrong way with the set up."
The Grand Prix weekend went ahead but only after lengthy talks overnight about racing in the aftermath of Friday's missile strike by Yemen's Houthi rebels on the nearby Aramco fuel plant, which ignited a blaze with black smoke billowing across the street circuit.
Team principals, race organisers, Formula One and the ruling body FIA, had said they had reached a unanimous agreement for the show to go on, in less than an hour, but it took much longer to convince the drivers.
After around three and a half hours of further talks, they agreed to race.
In a statement on their behalf, the Grand Prix Drivers' Association (GPDA) said "natural human concerns" had caused many to have doubts about taking part.