Leclerc On Pole in Monaco As Verstappen Slides To Sixth | 2024 Monaco grand Prix
The test of the Monaco circuit might not be outright pace but bravery. A poor car can be defied to produce from nowhere a stunning lap of high octane and claustrophobic precision. Home hero Charles Leclerc showed his mettle to top the second and third practice sessions, before topping qualifying too, hailed by the ships horns in the harbour and taking home the thought that this might be his year.
Q1 is one of the most congested sessions of the year, and several of the drivers complained of traffic which around so short a circuit was somewhat inevitable. Generally, drivers found time whenever as they found a gap large enough to fit todays fairly chunky cars into. It left several needing to save themselves on their last lap, among them Norris, Alonso, and Perez.
Norris pulled it off in the Senna tribute McLaren- Alonso and Perez did not. The Mexican will start Sundays race in eighteenth, an absolute disaster when other teams are piling so much pressure on Red Bull, closing the performance gap each race. Its also bad news on a personal front as every underwhelming performance gives his employers more impetus to look elsewhere for next year.
Then again the grid is littered with the bones of team mates who couldn’t keep Verstappen company, Sainz, Albon, Gasly, and Riccardo have all been where Perez now stands, and their careers have survived. His partner in disappointment Alonso started form the pitlane at Imola, and now finds himself on the verge of an unwelcome hat trick.
The tightness of the circuit and relatively low speeds helps to squash the field together, reducing the gaps in performance that engineering and aerodynamics have won. The two Mercedes looked strong, and both Alpines escaped the first stage of qualifying. Gasly in fact went even better, qualifying tenth.
He joins Alex Albon on the fifth row, who characteristically dragged his Williams far higher up the grid than it deserved to be. Both will hope to earn their first points of the season tomorrow. The pair were the highlight of Q2, after which Ocon, Hulkenberg, Stroll, and Magnussen were eliminated.
And so the final showdown was set. Nearly half of all Formula Ones races held here have been won by the pole sitter. Straight away Leclerc was reporting movement around his pedals and you could almost see the worry pass around the stands, who held the radios close. Relief came on seeing the first batch of times, Leclerc on provisional pole with a 1.10.4, Piastri half a tenth behind.
With four minutes to go the last push for pole began. Hamilton was first to mount an assault on the front row, weaving between the multicoloured towers of apartments, climbing up the hill to the casino and dropping down to the shore of the Mediterranean, glowing a deep blue in the sun.
He’ll start seventh, his time pipped straight away by team mate Russell, who beat Verstappen’s time into forth. Russell has outqualified his Hamilton in seven of this year’s eight races, and looks to have placed himself firmly as the team’s future once Hamilton leaves for 2025.
Next came Leclerc, improving my a monster two tenths as Verstappen reported over the radio that he’d hit a wall, and bailed on his flying lap. With him removed it was a matter of who could beat Leclerc, and the odds were in his favour.
Piastri improved but not by enough, so too Sainz, and Norris could only manage fourth, behind the three of them. It was at the first turn of Sainte-Dévote that Verstappen had brushed the outside wall, this year covered all over with the names of sponsors, and decided the time loss was terminal.
Leclerc had 24 career poles before today, and only five wins. That’s less than Riccardo, less the Perez, only four more than Estaban Ocon who had one chance and took it. Whether due to mistakes, lack of pace, or poor strategy his conversion rate is poor.
It’s a weakness that Piastri will be hoping to exploit, noting that if he can get ahead into turn one he’s more than happy to defend the race out, or, failing that, “there’s strategy.” Bad strategy cost Leclerc what should have been a win in 2022, a grid penalty for impeding scuppered his 2023 campaign, and really the less said about 2021 and 2019 the better.
For now he once again looks in primed for a long-awaited home win, and Sainz, who this year more than ever is his deadly rival across the garage, knows that Leclerc will be the focus of the teams efforts. Having “struggled with confidence all weekend” he did well to qualify third, and is confident his long run pace can get him past the McLaren of Piastri, which, for one race only, is yellow.
Beyond that though Sainz’s ambition stops. “The priority is to win with Charles tomorrow” he said, and in he means it. Should he get into second place you can more easily see him acting as a block than troubling his team mate. Verstappen certainly won’t be. He starts sixth, and was so annoyed about it that he went straight to the Red Bull floaterhome, instead of telling the media exactly how annoyed he was.
No-one born in Monaco has ever won in the principality before, mostly because there aren’t enough of them to fill a small football stadium, and the odds of anyone becoming an F1 driver are infinitesimally small. Yet tomorrow could well be the day. Seventy-eight laps of high concentration, and praying, await.
Full Grid: 1. Leclerc — 1:10.270, Piastri, Sainz, Norris, Russell, Verstappen, Hamilton, Tsunoda, Albon, Gasly, Ocon, Hulkenberg, Ricciardo, Stroll, Magnussen, Alonso, Sargeant, Perez, Bottas, Zhou Guanyu
