Pierre Gasly Secures Stunning Pole Position at Monza

A quarter of an hour before the biggest qualifying shock Formula 1 has seen in years, Pierre Gasly was not visualising apexes or replaying data traces. He was hunting down George Russell’s king on a laptop.

Online chess. In the Monza paddock. And Gasly was winning.

“I must say before the quali, I felt pretty confident,” he smiled later, “because I was picking piece by piece after piece.”

His performance coach Ben Thorne watched the game unfold and delivered a line that now feels like a plot device.

“OK, well, you’re getting George here,” Thorne told him, “but he’s going to get you in a few minutes.”

Gasly’s reply, by his own admission, contained a swear word. The grin on Saturday night suggested the punchline.

“Turned out that it worked out well. So yeah, it’s been fun.”

Russell could only laugh. “He beat me there,” the Briton said, “and I thought, ‘Well, I think I’ll beat you in qualifying,’ and here we are, he’s ahead of me again.”

On a circuit that has already given Gasly the most unlikely win of his career, Monza produced another twist. This time, there was nothing lucky about it.

A pole built, not gifted

No-one in the paddock, not even inside Alpine, walked into Saturday expecting the 30‑year‑old Frenchman to walk out with pole. His only F1 victory came here six years ago in that eerie, pandemic-season Monza, a race of penalties, restarts and chaos that spat Gasly’s Toro Rosso into clean air when Lance Stroll went off and Lewis Hamilton served a stop‑go.

That afternoon felt like a lottery win.

This one was earned.

Alpine’s car, trimmed out and slippery, has been a rocket in a straight line all weekend. The low-downforce aero philosophy, married to a Mercedes power unit that remains the class of the field, suddenly looks inspired on the temple of speed. An upgrade introduced in the Netherlands has nudged the car into a more competitive window. On Saturday, Gasly and his engineers stepped straight through it.

“Monza is a bit of a unique track as we know,” Gasly said. “It definitely exceeded all our expectations.

“Since this morning, the pace has been better. We managed to make a good step from P3 to quali and I think slightly bigger than the other guys around us.

“Straight from Q1, we were a bit surprised to see us up there. Our target was Q3. But then I was P1 in Q1, then P4 in Q2. I didn’t want to get too excited but then first run in Q3, I was third again.

“And then I felt, ‘OK, well, I really have a shot at it.’ It’s probably the first time I really get a true chance and tried to leave everything I had out there.

“It was quite hectic through Ascari and Parabolica. I don’t think there was definitely much (left) in there. And crossing the line, I knew it will be one of these laps that will be rewarded. But to the point to get to the pole position, I didn’t expect that.”

Gasly’s final run came from the perfect place in the train: second last, deep in the slipstream, with clear markers ahead and clean air at the end. Behind him, chaos. In front of him, opportunity.

He didn’t miss.

From forgotten man to front man

Gasly is popular in the paddock, a driver with friends up and down the grid, but for years he has been parked in that awkward category: respected, occasionally brilliant, rarely central to the story.

The Red Bull years left scars. Promoted in 2019 to partner Max Verstappen, he was overwhelmed in half a season and sent back to the junior team. Like others who have tried to live in Verstappen’s shadow, his confidence took the hit.

He rebuilt himself there, stayed in the Red Bull system for three more seasons, then gambled on Alpine. A factory seat, a French manufacturer, a chance to be a project leader rather than a supporting act.

The project stalled. Alpine’s own engine programme was abandoned, Renault pulling the plug and turning the team into a Mercedes customer. The car drifted in no-man’s land. Gasly waited for a machine worthy of his better days.

This season, at last, the signs of life have appeared. And this weekend, Alpine were at the centre of the storm long before Gasly parked his car on pole.

Monaco, the courtroom and Briatore’s grenade

On Friday, the team were still riding the emotional rollercoaster of Monaco. Gasly had briefly inherited a podium there after Alpine won an appeal against two pit-lane speeding penalties. Then the FIA court of appeal reinstated the punishments and took the trophy away again.

A few hours later, de facto team boss Flavio Briatore lit the fuse in a news conference. He alleged that one of the four judges involved in the appeal had “links” with McLaren.

The supposed connection? A charity event in California in 2018, attended by the judge, at which a local McLaren garage had donated “two or three” cars. No evidence of influence. No documentation. Just insinuation.

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella called the claim “insulting” in the room. Away from the cameras, the mood in Woking hardened. McLaren were furious that Briatore had cast doubt on a judge’s integrity on such flimsy grounds.

On Saturday, the FIA court of appeal did something it almost never does: it issued a public statement, rejecting any suggestion that its judges lacked independence or impartiality.

The verdict itself still left a sour taste. Many in the paddock remain unconvinced that any of the drivers penalised in Monaco truly deserved their punishments, but at least, as the court underlined, they were treated the same.

Inside Alpine, the anger lingered. The team remains adamant that their data proves Gasly never exceeded the pit-lane limit, and that the two penalties were unjust.

Managing director Steve Nielsen laid bare the emotional swing when he spoke to Sky Sports.

“Two or three days ago, we were on the floor,” he said. “It is really from being down to being on top of the world in just two days and it is amazing. We need to soak it up and make the best of it.

“Pierre is a class act. If you give him the machine, he will deliver. We failed to do that a few times last year.

“We haven’t always given him the most competitive machinery this year, but when we have, he has delivered, particularly earlier in the season. So to see the team bounce back, to see him deliver on the track he knows well, he lives locally, he lives in Milan. It was wonderful.”

From courtroom frustration to Monza elation in 48 hours. For a team battered by politics and performance, Gasly’s lap landed like a release valve.

Russell’s title chance, Antonelli’s fightback

Behind the Alpine on the grid sits the man with the most to gain on Sunday.

George Russell will start second, a golden opportunity on a weekend when championship leader Kimi Antonelli begins 20th after a grid penalty for exceeding his engine allowance. The Italian has had Russell’s measure for most of the year; the gap between them stands at 59 points.

Russell knows this is one of the few chances he cannot waste.

“The win is going to be very important tomorrow but I’m more pleased about the performance,” he said. “Since the summer break, every lap I have been in the top three positions, while I had that tough run of form before the break when every lap wasn’t in the top five.”

He did not have a clean shot at pole. Mercedes had planned for Kimi Antonelli to tow Russell, but Max Verstappen muscled his way between the silver cars on the out lap and tore up the script.

“We had a bit of a mess with Verstappen entering the lap,” Russell said. “He wanted to go for the tow, Kimi was there as well, and I did my lap a second and a half behind Max, which wasn’t ideal.

“It takes nothing away from what Pierre achieved because, as he said, they were flying all day, quickest in Q1 and right up there from the beginning. So I’m happy for Pierre and, of course, disappointed we weren’t on pole ourselves. However, great place to start for tomorrow.”

Antonelli, starting from the back, is still expected to slice through to the top six or thereabouts. But with Russell facing his own looming grid penalty in the coming races, this is the moment to hack into that 59‑point deficit.

If he doesn’t, the title picture starts to harden around Antonelli.

Ferrari fumble at home, Hamilton’s hint

Ferrari arrived at Monza with an upgraded engine and the usual weight of expectation. For the third race in succession, operational missteps blunted what looked like a sharper car.

Both Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton flirted with disaster in Q2, coming perilously close to elimination. In Q3, Leclerc rolled out of the pits while Hamilton still sat on his stands without wheels, the timing leaving the seven-time champion poorly placed in the slipstream queue.

McLaren’s Oscar Piastri then picked up a three-place grid penalty for impeding Red Bull’s Liam Lawson, bumping Leclerc and Hamilton to third and fourth.

Hamilton, like Russell, trails Antonelli by 59 points. His words after qualifying hinted at a man who believes Mercedes should start thinking about the bigger picture.

“(Piastri’s penalty) puts us in (with a) fighting chance, hopefully, with George,” Hamilton said. “That’s one Mercedes up front, so hopefully that gives us a chance to work as a team to try and topple them.

“We’re at a point in the year where 59 points is a huge – huge – deficit to recover from, especially when Mercedes continue to be the leaders in speed.

“So yeah, we do have to work as a team. Have we been… if and when that would ever change… we’ll find out, but all I can do is just try to arrive and do the best job I can.”

Leclerc, in front of the tifosi, will have his own ideas about alliances. Ferrari have the pace to threaten, but they will need a cleaner Sunday than they managed on Saturday.

Can Gasly turn pole into glory?

There is one nagging doubt for Alpine. On Friday’s long runs, Gasly did not look to have the race pace to live with Mercedes or Ferrari. Monza’s long straights suggest overtaking should be simple; the reality is always more stubborn. Track position matters, but so does tyre life, deployment and discipline.

“Obviously not to the pace of these guys around us, but we seem to have picked up more pace from yesterday to today,” Gasly said. “So we’ll obviously give our best shot and see what we can get out of it.”

He knows what Monza can do. He knows how quickly a race here can twist on a safety car, a penalty, a slow stop. Six years ago he was the beneficiary. This time, he starts as the hunted, not the hunter.

Pole at Monza, in an Alpine that began the year as an also-ran, is already a statement. If Gasly can survive 53 laps with Russell, Hamilton, Leclerc and a charging Antonelli in his mirrors, it becomes something else entirely.

For a driver once discarded by a top team, and for a manufacturer trying to convince itself it still belongs at the sharp end of Formula 1, Sunday could be the day the narrative finally changes.