Pierre Gasly claimed the first pole position of his Formula One career on Saturday, producing a stunning qualifying lap for Alpine at the Italian Grand Prix to beat Mercedes driver George Russell by just 0.060 seconds.
Gasly appeared as surprised as anyone when informed over team radio that he had topped the timesheets. “Let’s go! Been waiting for that one!” he exclaimed. Monza already holds special significance for the Frenchman, who secured his only Formula One victory at the circuit in 2020. “It has been nine years, trying to chase and get the opportunity to get pole position,” Gasly said. “To win my first race in Monza, get my first pole position on this track, it is something special around here.”
Piastri handed penalty
Oscar Piastri was third fastest but received a three-place grid penalty after stewards found the McLaren driver guilty of impeding Red Bull’s Liam Lawson during Q2. The penalty promoted Ferrari drivers Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, who are running an upgraded engine at their home Grand Prix, to the second row.
Hamilton had earlier survived a major scare, squeezing into Q3 by just one-thousandth of a second. Max Verstappen also gained a position and will start fifth.
Championship leader Kimi Antonelli qualified seventh but will start from the back of the grid because of a planned engine change. Gasly’s Alpine teammate Franco Colapinto consequently moves up to seventh, while defending champion Lando Norris, Arvid Lindblad and Gabriel Bortoleto complete the top 10.
Antonelli, bidding to become Formula One’s youngest world champion, leads Russell and Hamilton by 59 points in the standings. Norris is a further 24 points behind after winning the previous two races in Hungary and the Netherlands.
Gasly wins twice
Russell admitted Gasly’s pace had caught Mercedes by surprise. “To be totally honest, I don’t think we thought they were in the fight and it goes to show what a great job he did,” he said.
The Mercedes driver described his own qualifying session as “scrappy”, saying he began his final lap too close to Verstappen after the Red Bull driver allowed Antonelli through as teams attempted to maximise the benefit of the slipstream around the high-speed Monza circuit.
Russell also revealed that qualifying was not his first defeat to Gasly on Saturday. The pair had played chess around 15 minutes before the session, with Gasly winning that contest as well.
“Massive congrats to Pierre because that’s an incredible performance,” Russell said. “We were actually playing a game of chess about 15 minutes before qualifying and he beat me there and I thought, ‘Well, I think I’ll beat you in qualifying’, and here we are — he’s ahead of me again.”
Gasly’s pole came a day after he was stripped of his only podium of the season when the FIA’s International Court of Appeal reinstated a penalty imposed on him at the Monaco Grand Prix in June.
With overtaking relatively easier at Monza, Gasly could face considerable pressure from Russell and the Ferraris in Sunday’s race. Asked whether Alpine had the long-run pace to fight for victory, Gasly smiled off the concern.
“That’s a problem for tomorrow,” he said.