Leclerc roars to historic Monaco pole as Verstappen only sixth

Charles Leclerc recorded Ferrari's 250th pole position in Formula 1 as he grabbed P1 for his home Monaco Grand Prix.

Leclerc was favourite for pole heading into qualifying, after topping FP2 and FP3, with McLaren's Oscar Piastri emerging as his closest rival in the final Q3 shootout. 

Sitting on a 1:10.418, Leclerc improved to a 1:10.270 to deny Piastri a maiden career pole position, and claimed a third home pole in four years, stretching back to 2021.

Piastri took second, ahead of Carlos Sainz and Lando Norris as Max Verstappen's run of eight straight poles ended in sixth place, with Lewis Hamilton seventh.

Q3

After the first runs in Q3, Piastri was just 0.026s behind Leclerc at the top of the sheets, but the Monegasque driver found nearly two-tenths to lower his time and put pole out of reach of Piastri.

Verstappen sat third, but reported a wall-strike on his final attempt, causing him to fall to sixth as Sainz, Norris and George Russell all-improved to snare the top five places.

Verstappen, who was hoping to break Ayrton Senna's record of eight straight pole positions will be sixth, his lowest start since 11th in Singapore last season.

He finished ahead of Hamilton in seventh, Yuki Tsunoda, Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly, with the latter two both into Q3 for the first time this season for Williams and Alpine, respectively.

Q2 story

The big story in Q2 was Pierre Gasly dumping out Alpine team-mate at the death to secure a Q3 berth, Ocon falling by just 0.028s.

Ocon was on the bubble, but Gasly's late lap was enough to leap him into fifth on the times as Ocon led Nico Hulkenberg, 2018 winner Daniel Ricciardo, Lance Stroll and Kevin Magnussen in being eliminated.

Albon made it through to Q3 for Williams as the final driver through, as Norris topped the segment on a 1:10.372 with Verstappen, 0.013s behind and Piastri and Leclerc also both within a tenth.

Perez dumped in Q1

The biggest names to fall in Q1 were Perez and Fernando Alonso after poor final laps. 

Perez found himself in 18th place ahead of his final lap, but the Red Bull driver was not able to improve on his time and was dumped for the second straight year in Q1 in Monte Carlo. 

Alonso was pipped by to the final Q2 spot by former team-mate Esteban Ocon, with Logan Sargeant 17th for Williams ahead of the two Stake drivers on the back-row.

On a poor weekend for the team, Valtteri Bottas recovered from his FP3 crash to out-qualify Zhou Guanyu.

Up front, Russell topped the segment on a 1:11.492 from Piastri and Hamilton, with drivers completing multiple laps to get into the groove.

Leclerc finished P5, having complained of being out of sequence with the rest of the field, having not immediately gone out with the session started.