Red Bull's Max Verstappen took a shock pole position at the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Red Bull's first pole of a season dominated by Mercedes arrived as the Dutchman beat Valtteri Bottas by 0.025 seconds, with Lewis Hamilton third.
Only 0.086secs separated the top three in one of 2020's tightest sessions.
Britain's Lando Norris produced an outstanding lap to take fourth in the McLaren, just 0.251secs off pole and ahead of Red Bull's Alex Albon.
The second McLaren of Carlos Sainz starts sixth, giving the team extra hope of overhauling their 10-point gap to Racing Point in their fight for third place in the constructors' championship, on which millions of pounds of prize money hangs.
Mercedes had failed to take pole only once all year before Abu Dhabi - and that was in the unusual circumstances of a wet session on a newly laid track in Turkey, where the world champions were struggling to generate tyre temperature.
This was the first time in 2020 that Mercedes had been beaten for one-lap pace on a dry track.
"I said before I went to qualifying that it would be the final send of the season and we did that," he said. "Very happy with that.
"It was a tricky qualifying at the beginning to get your laps in but luckily everything came together in that final lap.
"The whole year when you are behind getting closer it gets a bit frustrating sometimes. But very pleased with today."
Bottas explained that tyres were again key - Mercedes were only marginally quicker on the soft tyre in the final part of qualifying than they were using the theoretically slower medium in the second session.
Bottas added: "We saw in practice three that Red Bull and especially Max was quick. The main issue was we didn't get the soft to work properly.
"To qualifying the medium was feeling better, I don't think we got 100% out of the tyres. The lap itself I wasn't fully happy with everything; the balance wasn't quite perfect. But small margins."
Hamilton, who missed the last race in Bahrain last weekend with coronavirus, said it had taken him time to get back into the swing of things on this return, even though it had only been two weeks since he last raced.
Hamilton said: "Honestly, really grateful be back here with the team and try to close out the strong season we've had.
"It has been a difficult weekend getting back into a rhythm. It was just a couple of weeks off but it felt like I'd lost momentum.
"I struggled with the balance all weekend, but congratulations to Max - a great way to seal the season. But we're going to give them a good run tomorrow.
"It is always nice to start first and this makes it even more exciting."
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