Pierre Gasly Claims Historic Pole Position at Monza
Pierre Gasly stunned Monza on Saturday, ripping up the form book and taking a sensational pole position for Alpine at the Italian Grand Prix.
On a circuit that already defines his Formula 1 career, the Frenchman found something extra again. Four years after his shock win here with Red Bull’s junior team, he delivered the lap of his life to beat Mercedes’ George Russell by just 0.060 seconds and claim his first-ever F1 pole.
Oscar Piastri took third for McLaren, with the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton only fourth and fifth despite the fanfare around their upgraded engine. Max Verstappen, in a scruffy and disjointed session for the world champion, could manage only sixth. Lando Norris slipped to ninth after his final attempt unraveled behind his team-mate.
All of it framed a story that belonged to Gasly.
Gasly’s redemption lap
Gasly arrived in Monza carrying a fresh wound. On Friday he lost his third place from the Monaco Grand Prix after the FIA Court of Appeal reinstated a penalty from June. The podium gone, the points gone. Another punch in a career that has swung between promise and frustration.
Twenty-four hours later, he hit back in the most emphatic way possible.
From his first lap in Q1, Gasly looked alive in the Alpine. The team brought a major upgrade to Zandvoort, where he could do no better than 11th on the grid. The package did not scream instant transformation. This weekend, it clicked.
Session by session, he chipped away at the time. The car looked planted through the Lesmos, confident on the brakes into the Rettifilo chicane. When it mattered in Q3, he stitched together a lap that left the paddock blinking at the timing screens.
Pole at Monza. In an Alpine. On merit.
It made him the first Frenchman to start from pole at a grand prix since Jean Alesi did it here for Benetton in 1997. Fittingly, Gasly lives in nearby Milan and addressed the crowd in Italian afterwards, soaking up the roar from the tifosi who know a romantic motorsport story when they see one.
For a driver who has spent most of his F1 life in the midfield, who lost his big Red Bull seat after half a season in 2019 and has been rebuilding ever since, this was not just a fast lap. It was validation.
Russell’s missed chance
For Russell, it felt like a pole that got away.
With championship leader Kimi Antonelli carrying a 30-place grid penalty for a new engine and guaranteed to start at the back, this was supposed to be Russell’s day. Mercedes had deployed Antonelli as a tow-giver for much of qualifying, the Italian running ahead to punch a hole in the air on Monza’s long straights.
The plan looked smart. The execution, less so.
In the decisive moments, Russell ended up starting his final lap tucked too close behind Verstappen. The Red Bull driver then braked hard into Parabolica to avoid being the lead car, letting Antonelli through and leaving Russell compromised.
He still dragged the Mercedes to second, but the margin to Gasly and the slender 0.12-second gap to Piastri underlined the sense of a missed opportunity. On a day when his main title rival starts last, front-row but not on pole will sting.
Piastri shines, Norris suffers
Piastri’s third place offered a timely lift after a difficult run of races. His key lap came early – his first flying effort in Q3 stood up as the times tumbled, and nobody behind could dislodge him.
The Australian led the pack out of the pits for the final runs, with Norris directly behind. At Monza, that is almost a poisoned chalice. You want a tow, not to be the one punching the air.
He tried to salvage it with late braking into the first chicane, locked up, and sailed straight on into the escape road. That was his session done.
The error hurt Norris even more. Stuck in the turbulence of Piastri’s McLaren and delayed through the chicane, Norris was already 0.4 seconds down in the first sector and could not claw it back. He failed to improve and dropped from seventh to ninth, an expensive moment for McLaren’s lead scorer.
Ferrari flatter to deceive
For Ferrari, the build-up hinted at something more.
A new engine, talked up as worth roughly a tenth of a second per lap, had raised hopes of a proper fight at the front on home soil. The reality under the Monza sun was harsher.
Hamilton only scraped into Q3 by 0.001 seconds, with Audi’s Gabriel Bortoleto missing out by the width of a front wing. Hamilton’s radio reaction said everything about how close he had come to an early exit.
Once in the top-10 shootout, Ferrari simply did not have the pace. Leclerc held fourth on both of his Q3 runs, unable to get within striking distance of the front row. Hamilton, ninth after his first attempt, improved on his second but still ended up 0.007 seconds shy of his team-mate.
On a day when the crowd wanted a red car on pole, they got a blue one instead.
Alpine’s gamble pays off
Gasly’s pole is also a story about a team that tore up its own roadmap.
Alpine – Renault’s works outfit – finished last in 2025. The project looked lost. Executive adviser Flavio Briatore, already making headlines off track this weekend, convinced Renault to abandon their in-house F1 engine programme at the end of last year and buy Mercedes power instead.
At the same time, the team effectively wrote off their 2025 car, diverting resources to prepare for this season’s new regulations. It was a bold, brutal reset.
The early part of the year suggested they had made a step towards the front of the midfield. Then the upgrades from rivals came, and Alpine began to slide backwards again. The new parts introduced at Zandvoort did little to inspire confidence.
Monza changed that. Gasly looked sharp from Friday, but even inside Alpine there was no serious expectation of pole. A strong top-10 result, maybe. A sniff of the second row at best.
Instead, he will line up at the front of the grid on Sunday, with a Mercedes alongside and a pack of proven race winners in his mirrors.
“It exceeded all our expectations,” Gasly admitted.
Nine years chasing a pole. A first win here in 2020. Now a first pole on the same strip of tarmac, in a car that was nowhere near this conversation a year ago.
Monza has always loved a surprise. The question now is whether Gasly and Alpine can turn this one-lap miracle into something even bigger when the lights go out.
