Fifteen minutes before qualifying for the Italian Grand Prix, Pierre Gasly beat George Russell at chess. An hour later he beat him at Monza too, by 0.060 seconds, to claim the most improbable pole position in Formula 1 for years.
Gasly’s 1:21.786 in the closing seconds of Q3 put an Alpine on the front of the grid at the Temple of Speed, ahead of Russell’s Mercedes and Oscar Piastri’s McLaren. It is the Frenchman’s first pole in 190 grand prix starts, the first for a French driver since Jean Alesi at this same circuit in 1997, and the first for the Enstone-based squad since 2009, when it raced as Renault.
“It’s been nine years trying to chase the opportunity to get a pole,” Gasly said. On team radio, the restraint was gone: “Yessssss! Let’s go. I’ve been waiting for that one!”
The lap that silenced Monza
Gasly was only third after the opening Q3 runs, behind Russell and Piastri, and had spent the session chipping away rather than announcing himself. “From the first lap in Q1, I felt very good in the car,” he said. “I was trying to chip a little bit away every single session and then in the end it felt like a very good lap.”
It was. Russell, first across the line on the final runs, could not repeat his earlier form, complaining of front locking and instability through Monza’s high-speed sections after a compromised warm-up lap. “It was a bit messy with Verstappen opening the lap,” he said. “Massive congrats to Pierre. That’s an incredible performance.”
Piastri missed his entry to the first chicane and slipped to third, 0.180s down. Charles Leclerc (+0.218s) and Lewis Hamilton (+0.225s) followed for Ferrari — Hamilton having scraped into Q3 by one thousandth of a second from Gabriel Bortoleto’s Audi. Max Verstappen was sixth, 0.284s adrift, in a Red Bull that has rarely looked this ordinary on a power circuit.
The most telling number was further down the order. Franco Colapinto put the second Alpine eighth, 0.434s off his team-mate but ahead of Lando Norris. Whatever Alpine found in the low-drag Monza configuration, it was in both cars.
A scrappy afternoon for the contenders
The men fighting for the championship made a mess of it. Kimi Antonelli, who leads the standings by 59 points, qualified seventh but starts from the back of the grid after an engine change. Norris, fourth in the title race and 83 points behind Antonelli, could manage only ninth after losing his tow when Piastri locked up at the first chicane on the decisive run.
Piastri’s own afternoon unravelled after the flag: the stewards found he had impeded Liam Lawson in Q2, knocking the Racing Bulls driver out, and handed him a three-place grid penalty. That reshuffles the top of the grid significantly:
- Gasly starts from pole, with Russell alongside him
- Leclerc and Hamilton are promoted to the second row, a Ferrari front-two on home soil despite a qualifying both drivers called difficult
- Verstappen moves up to fifth, Piastri drops to sixth
- Colapinto lines up seventh, Norris eighth
With Antonelli starting 20th, Russell has the clearest opportunity of the season to cut into his team-mate’s advantage. Hamilton, level on points with Russell in second, starts a place behind him. Monza has a habit of scrambling the form book, and this weekend it has done so before a wheel has turned in anger.
Can Gasly convert it?
History offers Gasly encouragement and a warning in equal measure. His only F1 victory came here, for AlphaTauri in 2020, in a race decided by a safety car and a pit-lane closure rather than raw pace. Monza’s slipstream makes pole position less valuable than almost anywhere else on the calendar; a lone Alpine leading into the first chicane with Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull machinery in its wake is exposed rather than protected.
Alpine’s season supports the caution. Mercedes power has transformed the team’s straight-line performance under the 2026 regulations, but single-lap speed has flattered a car that has generally raced less well than it qualifies. Gasly’s points finishes this year have come from execution rather than outright pace.
None of which diminishes Saturday. Alpine have not led a grand prix grid in the modern era, Gasly waited nine years for a lap like this, and he produced it at the circuit where his career peaked. Whether he still leads at the end of lap one is a separate question — one the slipstream, not the stopwatch, will answer.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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