Formula One championship leader Nico Rosberg turned up the heat on Lewis Hamilton by edging out his title rival to claim pole position for the Japanese Grand Prix.
Rosberg, who leads Hamilton in the standings by 23 points, was just 13 thousandths of a second faster than his Mercedes team-mate in a nail-biting qualifying session in Suzuka on Saturday.
Kimi Raikkonen qualified third for Ferrari, while Red Bull's Max Verstappen will take advantage of Sebastian Vettel's three-place grid penalty to start fourth.
Rosberg, fastest in all three practice sessions this weekend, has now been on pole in Japan for three successive seasons, but at one stage it looked as though it would be Hamilton who would steal the initiative ahead of Sunday's race.
The world champion, who is bidding to bounce back from his engine horror show in Malaysia last Sunday, claimed provisional pole only for Rosberg to move ahead of his team-mate in the dying seconds.
His best lap of one minute and 30.647 seconds was the equivalent of 83 centimetres ahead of his team-mate at this track.
If the German is victorious on Sunday, he will take the title race out of Hamilton's hands as even if the Briton won each of the remaining four races after this weekend he would still not be guaranteed to claim the championship.
Rosberg, who has failed to win in Japan despite his impressive pole record said: "The start is going to be an important one. We __have seen that it is not easy because it is downhill and there is less grip. It will be an interesting challenge."
Hamilton, a winner here last year and in 2014, added: "I'm happy with qualifying. It's been a weekend of a lot of work to get the car set up right.
"To be close, I was really happy with it. I did as well as I could. History has shown you don't __have to be on pole to win here."