Pierre Gasly Secures Historic Pole Position at Monza
Pierre Gasly has always had a thing with Monza. On Saturday, that bond turned into something historic.
Four years after his improbable victory here, the Frenchman produced the lap of his life to take a shock pole position for Alpine at the Italian Grand Prix, beating Mercedes’ George Russell by just 0.060 seconds and ripping up every script written for this weekend.
Oscar Piastri will start third for McLaren, ahead of the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, while Max Verstappen could do no better than sixth in a scruffy, fragmented session for the reigning world champion. Lando Norris, delayed at the worst possible moment, ended up only ninth.
Behind them all on Sunday’s grid, despite qualifying seventh, will be championship leader Kimi Antonelli. The Mercedes prodigy carries a hefty grid penalty for taking a new engine and will start from the back. On a day that should have belonged to Russell and Mercedes, Gasly stole the show.
Gasly’s nine-year chase ends at Monza
This was no fluke tow lap or rain lottery. From the first timed run in Q1, Gasly looked alive in the Alpine.
“It was an incredible qualifying,” the 30-year-old said. “From the first lap in Q1, I felt very good in the car, trying to chip away a bit every single session. It felt like a very good lap. It has been nine years trying to chase a pole position and to take my first win here and then my first pole here is amazing.”
Nine years of waiting. Nine years of midfield grind. A brief, brutal promotion to Red Bull in 2019, then the demotion back to Toro Rosso and the slow work of rebuilding a reputation. Alpine, when he joined in 2023, was supposed to be the reset button. Instead, the team slumped, and last year they finished bottom of the championship.
Yet here he was, on a circuit where power and efficiency usually expose pretenders, putting an Alpine on pole on merit.
The timing carried an extra edge. Just a day earlier, Gasly had lost his third place from the Monaco Grand Prix after the FIA Court of Appeal reinstated a penalty from June. The podium disappeared from his record. A pole at Monza replaced it with something arguably bigger.
His lap also made him the first Frenchman to take pole for a grand prix since Jean Alesi did it here for Benetton in 1997. At the circuit where Alesi’s tifosi still remember him fondly, Gasly wrote his own line into French motorsport history.
Russell’s missed chance
This was supposed to be Russell’s afternoon. With Antonelli handicapped by a 30-place grid penalty, the Briton had a golden chance to slash the gap to his team-mate in the standings. Mercedes even used Antonelli as a dedicated tow car for much of qualifying, parking the Italian in front of Russell to punch a hole in the air down Monza’s long straights.
It almost worked. Almost.
Russell ended up second, 0.12 seconds ahead of Piastri, but crucially behind Gasly. The frustration was obvious.
“Firstly, massive congrats to Pierre because that’s an incredible performance,” Russell said. “We were finishing a game of chess 15 minutes before qualifying and he beat me there and I thought, ‘well, I will beat him in qualifying.’ But here we are. I am disappointed not to be on pole but Pierre was very fast from Q1.”
The decisive moment came before Russell’s final flying lap. He found himself too close to Verstappen, who had no interest in leading the pack into the last corners.
“Going into Parabolica, Max just slammed on the brakes and didn’t want to be the lead car,” Russell explained. “In hindsight, it would probably have been better not trying this, but P2 is a good place to start.”
It was classic Monza gamesmanship. No one wants to tow their rival, everyone wants the perfect slipstream, and occasionally the whole plan collapses in a tangle of overthinking and brake lights. For Russell, it turned a likely pole into a near miss on a day when the door to the championship battle had swung wide open.
Alpine’s gamble pays off
Alpine arrived in Italy with modest expectations. A sizeable upgrade package debuted at the previous race in the Netherlands, but Gasly only managed 11th on the grid there. The step looked underwhelming.
Then came Monza.
The team, reshaped by executive adviser Flavio Briatore’s influence and Renault’s decision to abandon their own F1 engine programme in favour of customer Mercedes power, had already shifted its focus early. Work on the 2025 car was effectively shelved to pour resources into this year’s new regulations. It dragged them from the back towards the front of the midfield.
They started the season strongly, then slipped as rivals brought more aggressive development. Zandvoort’s upgrade didn’t immediately scream “game-changer.” Yet Gasly’s pace this weekend suggested something had clicked.
“It exceeded all our expectations,” he admitted.
On a circuit that demands top speed, braking stability and low drag, Alpine suddenly had all three. Gasly lived just down the road in Milan, spoke to the crowd in fluent Italian, and drove like a man who knew every bump and braking marker by heart. For a team that finished last a year ago, pole at Monza was not just a surprise. It was a statement.
Piastri lifts, Norris stumbles
Behind the front row, Piastri delivered the kind of qualifying he badly needed.
The Australian has endured a rough patch in recent races, but he was on it from the moment Q3 began. His best time came on his first flying lap, enough to secure third and put him in the mix for a podium on Sunday.
“The first lap felt quite good,” he said. “I tried to see if anyone wanted to go in front out of the pit lane but no-one did.”
That left him leading the pack at the start of the final runs. At Monza, that’s almost a punishment. Without a tow, you’re a sitting duck.
Piastri tried to salvage it with aggression into the first chicane. He braked late, too late, locked up and went straight on into the run-off. Session over.
“It was always going to be difficult,” he said. “I tried to be as late as possible into the first chicane and locked up so that was the session.”
His error wrecked Norris’ lap as well. The Briton, running directly behind, had to check up at the chicane and lost four tenths in the first sector alone. There was no way back from that deficit. He failed to improve and slid from seventh to ninth on the grid.
On a day when McLaren had the car to lock out the second row, they left with third and ninth. Piastri walks away encouraged. Norris, less so.
Ferrari flatter, then fade
Ferrari arrived at Monza with fresh power and fresh hope. Their upgraded engine, reckoned to be worth around a tenth of a second per lap, had them dreaming of a front-row fight in front of the tifosi.
Reality bit hard.
The warning signs came early. Hamilton, in the Ferrari-powered car, scraped into Q3 by just 0.001 seconds, as Audi’s Gabriel Bortoleto narrowly missed knocking him out. Hamilton’s radio response was unprintable, but the relief was obvious.
In the final session, the red cars simply lacked the speed to trouble Gasly, Russell or Piastri. Leclerc sat fourth on both his Q3 runs and stayed there. Hamilton, only ninth after his first attempt, improved on his second but ended up 0.007 seconds behind his team-mate in fifth.
At Monza, that’s the difference between the second row and the third. Between attacking into Turn One and defending from behind.
The engine upgrade had promised more. The stopwatch delivered a harsher verdict.
Verstappen off-colour, Antonelli sent to the back
Verstappen’s sixth place summed up his afternoon: messy, disjointed, and lacking the usual Red Bull authority.
He found himself tangled in the same positioning games as Russell in the final minutes, trying to avoid giving a tow while not ruining his own lap. The rhythm never really came. Sixth on the grid leaves him with work to do on Sunday, though few will write him off from that position.
Antonelli, meanwhile, played the team role to perfection in qualifying, towing Russell and sacrificing his own laps. He still managed seventh-fastest time, but his engine penalty sends him to the back.
For the championship leader, this weekend now becomes a damage-limitation exercise. For Russell, it should have been the perfect opportunity to close the gap. Gasly’s pole has complicated that story.
Monza has a habit of elevating unlikely heroes. Pierre Gasly knows that better than most. He won here when no one expected it. Now he starts from the front, in a car that was nowhere near this level 12 months ago.
On Sunday, he will lead the field down to the Rettifilo, with a Mercedes on his tail, a hungry McLaren behind, and Ferrari desperate not to be humiliated at home.
He has waited nine years for a pole. How long will he wait for his next win?
