An extraordinary lap breaks Verstappen's run: It's pole for Leclerc in Monaco!

Charles Leclerc made it clear from the very first laps in FP1: no one would have stolen pole position on the streets of Monaco from him. And so it was. A first position with several meanings, because it's Ferrari's 250th pole in their Formula 1 history, but also because the streak of seven pole positions with which Verstappen opened the 2024 World Championship comes to an end.

In Monte Carlo, as we know, starting in front ensures an advantage that is difficult for your opponents to regain, as long as you avoid driving errors and keep your eyes wide open on the strategy side. Leclerc knows this well, having lost a race in 2022 that he was dominating: but, looking at the bigger picture, the weather forecasts which are not predicting rain for Sunday tend to avoid this danger a little.

But before moving on to the race, as always, let's analyze what happened during this qualifying session:

Leclerc built up his pace advantage built from Friday, but his execution put him on pole!

As mentioned, the performance gap between Charles and the rest of the grid had already appeared clear in FP1 and FP2, where at times the Monegasque had an advantage of 0.9 s over the closest rival. A gap that shrank as the chequered flag waved in free practice, but which gives the idea of how comfortable the Ferrari driver was right from the start in being able to push to the limit and gain valuable laptime in every corner.

Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

His driving at the limit (even too risky, at times) was also made possible by a fine-balanced Ferrari SF-24 which required very few setup changes, despite having the most recent update package on board and a new high downforce rear wing, brought to the Principality as an adaptation to the circuit.

In short, despite having to deal with material whose potential not yet fully known to the engineers, the latter were able to put on a track that's atypical (to say the least) a car that immediately performed. Nonetheless, ascribing Charles Leclerc's pole position to the balance of the SF-24 would be ungenerous to the latter, who in fact inflicted a gap of 0.248 s on his teammate Sainz, who nevertheless achieved an excellent third position.

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

The difference between the two Ferrari drivers was largely determined by Leclerc's deep knowledge of the track, who as a good "host" knew where to put the wheels of his car in order to gain laptime... Two examples above all are the exit of the Nouvelle Chicane, where the Monegasque left just a few centimeters between the front left and the wall, and the second last corner, the Rascasse. Here the difference was entirely down to the line chosen, with Leclerc always using the inside line compared to Sainz, Verstappen and the two McLarens: although in theory it wasn't the most profitable, his ability was in not wasting in the very short stretch that brings to the last corner (Antony Noghes) what he'd gained at the entry of the Rascasse.

Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

No less important was the qualifying execution by the driver of car number 16: as you may have noticed, in both Q1 and Q2 the advantage seen in free practice had practically disappeared, with Charles even in the middle of the classification: in my opinion, this has little to do with external disturbances (such as the omnipresent Monte Carlo traffic and the plastic bag stuck in his front wing in Q1)... Rather, I read in his approach an intent not to overdo it - with risk of damaging the car against the walls - and only show his cards when it would have really mattered, i.e. in Q3: of course, it's one thing to plan it, quite another to succeed as he then did. Here too lies the merit of his Saturday, who held his third pole in Monaco in the last four editions.

Both McLarens close to Ferrari, Piastri beats Norris to start from the front row!

The strongest opponents for the two Ferraris were the two McLarens and the Red Bull of Max Verstappen, whose mistake that relegated him to sixth position we'll come back to later. Coming then to the two cars of the team from Woking, this qualifying is yet another demonstration that McLaren - after the "miraculous" updates in Miami - can really think big, and obtaining other Grand Prix victories is actually an achievable goal.

Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

In fact, thinking about the characteristics of the Monte Carlo circuit (altitude variations, bumps, slow chicanes, hairpins), we find many areas that would have put last year's McLaren - or even the early 2024 spec - under pressure. Instead, as Team Principal Andrea Stella explained in the last GP in Imola, the updates installed on the MCL38 contributed to broadening the setup window, with the result that engineers and drivers now have some adjustments at their disposal in order to mitigate the weak points of their single-seater, when racing on difficult layouts.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

All this put Oscar Piastri in second position (a result that would exactly replicate the qualifying in Imola, if he hadn't been given a penalty due to an impeding) and Lando Norris in fourth position. It's interesting how the Aussie defeated the Englishman on Saturday twice in a row, almost as if he wanted to clarify - if there was ever a need - that the pure speed is there. However, what he will have to work on to really give Lando a hard time is the race pace, a circumstance in which the Englishman seems to have yet a better tyre management than Oscar himself.

Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

From a race perspective, having a complete representation of Ferrari and McLaren in the first two rows, I expect both teams to play a strategic match in 2 vs 2 conditions, perhaps sacrificing the result of the worst placed driver to try and take the race win with the better placed one (which, avoiding cataclysms at the start, should be Piastri for McLaren and Sainz for Ferrari). 

Unusual mistake for Verstappen: starting from P6, his race will be a nightmare...

The poleman of the first 7 races of this World Championship, for once, will find himself forced to start from the third row, on the circuit where this is more detrimental for the comeback ambitions that the World Champion may have. It's pretty clear that, if he wants to grab even just the podium, much of his recovery will have to go through a creative strategy by the Red Bull pitwall, led by the same Hannah Schmitz who gifted victory to Sergio Perez in 2022.

Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

That said, why did Verstappen only qualify in P6? The main reason for this unsatisfactory result for him lies in the mistake that forced him to give up the last attempt in Q3: a slightly deep braking at Sainte Devote that created much worse consequences, with a contact with the left guard rail, following which the Dutchman gave up on his lap.

Before this misadventure, his pace in qualifying (very strong especially in the first sector) was second only to Leclerc, which is why I believe that without the error he could have overtaken both the McLarens and Sainz's Ferrari... Instead, Max finds himself starting sandwiched between the Mercedes of George Russell (P5) and Lewis Hamilton (P7); a situation that he would normally take a few laps to reverse, but which - as mentioned - becomes almost defnitive due to the impossibility of overtaking in the narrow streets of the Principality.

Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

His teammate Perez did even worse than him, as after a dull Q1 only closed in eighteenth position, ahead of only the two Stakes of Bottas and Zhou, who found themselves in a totally unfavorable car-circuit matching in Monaco. As for Checo, this qualifying seems to be "paired" with that of Imola, so I fear he might be reaching a point in the season in which the results of the Red Bull team depend on Verstappen's performances alone: if - on the one hand - it's early to take certain dynamics for granted, on the other hand we must consider that the technical advantage of the Milton Keynes team this year is much narrower than in 2023, so Horner and his colleagues will need Perez to be in his best shape to grab useful points in the Constructors' Championship.

Fine margins in the midfield, where Tsunoda and Albon stand out while Aston Martin disappoints

Below the top positions we witnessed a truly close qualifying, in which the gaps were so small as to have, for example, a Q1 in which there were only 0.395 s between the first and last classified driver: this also explains the sixteenth position from which Fernando Alonso will have to start, after being also eliminated like Perez in the first part of the session - despite having dedicated the entire Imola race to preparing for this weekend, as he probably will find himself with two consecutive "zeros" in the Drivers' World Championship.

Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

While his teammate Lance Stroll was unable to do better than fourteenth position, we would highlight those who stood out positively in these qualifying sessions: we're talking about Yuki Tsunoda (today once again "best of the rest" in P8) and Alexander Albon, the whose ninth position is the first glimmer of light in a season during which he has so far collected zero points and little satisfaction, despite a talent that we praised several times on these pages. The Monaco GP is therefore the first concrete chance for the Anglo-Thai to score points in the World Championship, consequently also lifting "his" Williams - after a multi-year contract signed 10 days ago - from last place in the Constructors' Classification.

The only variable will be the strategy over the 78 laps of the "world's fastest parade"

Let's close our analysis with a quick preview of what we'll see in tomorrow's race (the start of which is at 3.00 pm CET). As is usual in Monaco, arranging a comeback is practically impossible to do through on-track overtakes: the only variable that can allow you to gain positions - or lose them - is strategy.

Since track position is so important and tyre degradation is very low, usually the Monaco GP features one-stop races, with a pitstop towards the middle of the scheduled 78 laps: from this perspective, the timing of the above-mentioned pitstop is mainly linked to traffic management, in the presence of which it becomes impossible to show your real pace, even when following a much slower car.

Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

For these reasons, the Monaco race is referred to as a "parade"... But if dancing between the walls at 250 km/h - among other cars - can really be considered a parade, well, see you tomorrow to enjoy it!

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