Leclerc On Monaco Pole As Pérez & Sainz Tangle
Calum Gill 16:42 28/05/2022
Home hero Charles Leclerc scored pole position for Ferrari for Formula 1’s Monaco Grand Prix on Sunday.
Leclerc’s pole is his second in a row in Monaco – last year’s having ended in an infamous pre-race retirement - and his fifth in seven races this season. Though the Monegasque looked to have an edge on sheer pace, he was aided by a late crash by Red Bull challenger Sergio Pérez with 30 seconds to go, which blocked up the track and ended qualifying with a red flag. Quickest in Q1 and Q2, Leclerc uncorked a weekend-best 01:13.376 with his first lap in the pole shoot-out, leaving him around three tenths clear of both team-mate Carlos Sainz and the Red Bull duo. And when Perez slid off at Portier - and Sainz bumped into him after slamming on the brakes trying to avoid the stricken RB18, lamenting yellow flags being shown late - Leclerc’s pole was confirmed.
Sainz is due to join his team-mate Leclerc on the front row, with Perez still ahead of Max Verstappen – who he’d outpaced in every practice session of the weekend as well. Lando Norris (McLaren) and George Russell (Mercedes) are to make up an all-British row three, having got their push laps in just in time. Fernando Alonso crashed his Alpine before he could make it to the site of the Perez/Sainz incident and will start seventh, ahead of Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, who looked to have a narrow edge on team-mate Russell but was thwarted by the red flag. Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin) and Esteban Ocon (Alpine) completed the top 10.
AlphaTauri driver Yuki Tsunoda tapped the barriers going through the Swimming Pool chicane on a late Q1 lap - which brought out the briefest of red flag periods, and a confusing one that that given that his AT03 wasn’t too damaged to prevent it from making it back to the pits. Remarkably, he headed back out once the red flag was lifted - leaving just over two minutes on the clock - and managed to escape Q1 elimination, while team-mate Pierre Gasly narrowly didn’t make it round in time for a final flying lap and missed out on Q2. Tsunoda would wind up a tenth away from progressing into Q3, and is due to be joined by Valtteri Bottas’s Alfa Romeo on row six.
Tsunoda’s fellow last-gasp Q1 escapees Daniel Ricciardo (McLaren) and Mick Schumacher (Haas) completed the order in Q2, both slotting in narrowly behind Schumacher’s 13th-placed team-mate Kevin Magnussen. Ricciardo was seven tenths off what team-mate Norris managed to make it into Q3. Alex Albon was on course to progress out of Q1 before the Tsunoda red flag, and actually managed to improve afterwards - yet still only took 16th. He was still eight tenths up on team-mate Nicholas Latifi, the Williams pair split by Gasly and Lance Stroll - who released a loud yelp of frustration when informed of his final position of 18th. Alfa Romeo rookie Guanyu Zhou was another deeply frustrated voice, having missed out on a final lap and ending up 20th on the grid.
