Pierre Gasly Claims Stunning Pole Position at Monza
Pierre Gasly has always had a thing with Monza. On Saturday, it gave him something he had been chasing for nine long years.
The Alpine driver delivered a stunning, almost surreal pole position for the Italian Grand Prix, edging Mercedes’ George Russell by just 0.060 seconds and detonating the script everyone expected to read.
Oscar Piastri lined up third for McLaren, with the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton only fourth and fifth despite their much-talked-about upgraded engine. Max Verstappen could do no better than sixth, while Lando Norris slumped to ninth after a muddled end to qualifying.
And the championship leader? Kimi Antonelli will start at the back, his seventh place on the timesheets rendered meaningless by a heavy grid penalty for a new engine. On paper, this was Russell’s golden chance. On the stopwatch, it became Gasly’s day.
Gasly and Monza, again
Twenty-four hours earlier, Gasly had been stripped of his third place from the Monaco Grand Prix after the FIA Court of Appeal reinstated a penalty from June. On Saturday, he answered in the only language that really counts in Formula 1: outright pace.
From his first lap in Q1, the Frenchman felt something. Grip. Balance. Confidence. He chipped away at it session by session, and when it mattered most, he produced a lap that stunned the paddock and the grandstands alike.
“It has been nine years trying to chase a pole position,” he said. “To take my first win here and then my first pole here is amazing.”
Gasly became the first Frenchman to take pole for a grand prix since Jean Alesi did it for Benetton at Monza in 1997. That’s not just a stat. It’s a generational gap, bridged by a driver who has spent most of his career fighting in F1’s midfield, and often losing the political battles that go with it.
Dropped by Red Bull back to Toro Rosso in 2019. Rebuilding his reputation ever since. A factory move to Alpine in 2023 that, for a long time, looked more like a cul-de-sac than a springboard.
Yet here he was, living in nearby Milan, addressing the tifosi in Italian from the top of the qualifying order at Monza.
Pole position for Alpine. At Monza. On merit.
No one inside that garage truly expected it.
“It exceeded all our expectations,” Gasly admitted.
Russell’s chance slips
This was supposed to be Russell’s afternoon. With Antonelli buried by a 30-place penalty, the Briton had a clear shot at pole and a huge opportunity to carve into his team-mate’s championship lead.
Instead, he found himself outgunned by an Alpine and only 0.12 seconds clear of Piastri.
Mercedes had used Antonelli as a tow car for much of the session, the Italian effectively employed as a high-speed windbreak to slingshot Russell down the straights. It looked clever. It looked controlled. Then the final run unravelled.
Russell started his last lap tucked up too close behind Verstappen. The Red Bull driver slowed dramatically at Parabolica, letting Antonelli through so he wouldn’t be the lead car in clean air. The chain reaction left Russell out of rhythm just when he needed a perfect launch.
“Going into Parabolica, Max just slammed on the brakes and didn't want to be the lead car,” Russell said. “In hindsight, it would probably have been better not trying this, but P2 is a good place to start.”
He tried to console himself with that. He also doffed his cap to Gasly.
“Firstly, massive congrats to Pierre because that's an incredible performance,” Russell said. They had been playing chess 15 minutes before qualifying, he revealed. Gasly won that, too.
Russell walked out of the Alpine motorhome smiling earlier in the day. He walked out of qualifying with a front-row start, but also with the uneasy feeling that an enormous chance had just slipped through his fingers.
Piastri up, Norris down
For Oscar Piastri, third place felt like a turning point. After a difficult run of races, the Australian delivered when it mattered, and he did it with his first flying lap in Q3.
The second run never came together. Piastri led the pack out of the pits, with Norris behind him – the worst place to be at Monza when the tow is worth so much. He tried to brake as late as he dared into the first chicane, locked up, and ran straight on into the escape road.
“The first lap felt quite good,” he said. He had even slowed to see if anyone wanted to go ahead out of the pit lane. No one did. The price was paid at Turn 1. “I tried to be as late as possible into the first chicane and locked up so that was the session.”
His mistake ruined Norris’s lap as well. The Briton got bottled up at the chicane, dropped 0.4 seconds in the first sector alone, and never recovered. What could have been a front-row challenge turned into ninth on the grid.
McLaren left qualifying with one car celebrating and the other wondering what might have been.
Ferrari’s new engine, same frustration
Ferrari arrived for qualifying with optimism and a new engine that was believed to be worth around a tenth of a second per lap. On a power circuit like Monza, that should have put them right in the thick of the fight for pole.
The numbers never translated into reality.
Hamilton only scraped into Q3 by 0.001 seconds, surviving a late lap from Audi’s Gabriel Bortoleto by the width of a fingernail. The Briton’s reaction over the radio said everything about the tension of that moment.
In the final session, the red cars simply lacked the pace. Leclerc was fourth on both of his Q3 runs, unable to get within striking distance of Gasly or Russell. Hamilton, ninth after his first attempt, improved on his second but still wound up 0.007 seconds behind his team-mate.
For a team that had talked up its engine step, fifth on the grid for Hamilton and fourth for Leclerc felt flat. At Monza, of all places, that stings.
Alpine’s gamble pays off
Behind Gasly’s lap lies a longer story of risk and reinvention at Alpine.
The team finished last in 2025. A works outfit, backed by Renault, anchored to the bottom of the constructors’ standings. It forced a rethink.
Executive adviser Flavio Briatore – already at the centre of controversy off track this weekend – pushed Renault to end their F1 engine programme at the end of last year and switch to customer Mercedes power-units. At the same time, the team effectively wrote off development of their 2025 car to focus on this season’s new regulations.
It was a bold call. It has started to pay.
The new rules and Mercedes engines hauled Alpine towards the front of the midfield at the start of the year. Then the others caught up, and the team began to slide backwards again.
A large upgrade package arrived at Zandvoort. On paper, it looked significant. On track, it did not immediately transform the car. Gasly could only qualify 11th there.
Monza told a different story. All weekend, the Frenchman looked sharp. Even then, no one in blue truly believed pole position was realistic. A good result, yes. A front-row maybe, if everything fell perfectly.
Instead, they walked away with the best grid slot of all.
Gasly, the driver who once looked destined to be a footnote in Red Bull’s long list of nearly men, now leads the field away at Monza in an Alpine reborn. On Sunday, with Russell hunting, Piastri lurking, Verstappen angry, and Ferrari desperate in front of its home crowd, the question is no longer whether he belongs at the front.
It’s how long he can stay there.
