Charles Leclerc took pole position for the Monaco Grand Prix, breaking Max Verstappen’s streak of poles after the world champion glanced the wall on his final lap.
The Ferrari driver ended Verstappen’s monopoly on pole position in 2024 and his record streak of poles dating back to 2023 by securing the top spot by a a tenth of a second from Oscar Piastri.
Carlos Sainz Jnr took third on the grid in the other Ferrari but is under investigation for potentially impeding a rival. Verstappen qualified sixth after clipping a wall in his bid for pole position.
Q1
The most frantic 18 minutes of qualifying of the season began with a huge queue of cars waiting to take to the track. All 20 drivers ventured out on fresh soft tyres, with not a single driver willing to play it safe.
Verstappen set the early benchmark with a 1’12.790, but that time was quickly beaten by a raft of his rivals as drivers gradually built up their speed. The Red Bull driver improved on his next attempt to a 1’12.084, but that was beaten by Oscar Piastri to the tune of two tenths.
Traffic was expectedly extreme, with Alexander Albon and Carlos Sainz Jnr the first drivers to earn a summons from the stewards and alleged impeding incident. The stewards will investigate both drivers after the session.
Leclerc, the fastest driver in practice, was forced to return to the pits after collecting a discarded scrap of advertising banner on his front wing end plate. However, after the team took the debris off his car, he returned to the track to set the quickest time of the session so far.
In the final minutes of the session, Sergio Perez and Lando Norris were the big names in danger of being eliminated. The McLaren driver, who lost time early in the session when his car also picked up a strip of advertising from a barrier, pitted with under two minutes to go, leaving him one single lap to secure passage into Q2. He ensured his progression by jumping up to tenth.
That left Perez in need of an improvement to avoid elimination, but he could not manage to do better than 18th on his final lap which put him out of Q1 in Monaco for the second consecutive season. Joining him out was Fernando Alonso in the Aston Martin, with Logan Sargeant also failing to follow Albon into Q2.
Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu were the slowest drivers eliminated from the session in 19th and 20th, respectively, to cap off a torrid start to the weekend for the Sauber team.
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Q1 result
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