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After being
quickest on Friday, Charles Leclerc today took his third Monaco Grand Prix
pole position, having previously secured the top spot on the grid in 2021
and 2022, thus joining drivers of the calibre of Niki Lauda, Stirling Moss
and Michael Schumacher on the list of three time pole sitters in the
Principality. This was the Monegasque’s 24th pole, which puts him equal
twelfth with the aforementioned Lauda and Nelson Piquet. It’s Ferrari’s 13th
pole here and its 250th overall.
The front two rows of the grid will feature two Ferraris and two McLarens
tomorrow afternoon. Alongside Leclerc (1’10”270) will be Australia’s Oscar
Piastri (1’10”424). Behind them will be Spain’s Carlos Sainz (1’10”518) and
Englishman Lando Norris (1’10”542).
THE DAY ON
TRACK
As always happens at this very unusual track, the third free practice
session was given over almost entirely to finding the cars’ maximum
performance, because of how important qualifying is in deciding the outcome
of the race. That can also be seen from looking at the tyre usage chart,
with only Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll using anything other than the
Soft, specifically the Medium, for one actual run.
Obviously, everyone used the C5 throughout qualifying and it proved capable
of delivering a good level of performance even over longer runs than are
usually seen in the grid deciding session.
It’s worth noting the different approaches that teams and drivers adopted
when it came to preparing the tyres for the timed lap, with some choosing to
do an additional preparation lap, confirming a trend that had emerged
yesterday, even in higher temperatures than in the first two free practice
sessions.
The Pirelli Pole Position Award was presented to Charles Leclerc by the
English actor, Nicholas Galitzine, best known for playing the role of Prince
Harry in “Red White and Royal Blue” and the son George in the “Mary and
George” miniseries alongside Julianne Moore. Currently, he is in the
limelight starring alongside Ann Hathaway in “The Idea of You” available on
Amazon Prime. |
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MARIO ISOLA - HEAD OF F1 AND CAR RACING
“In Monaco, much of the excitement is usually to be experienced on Saturday
and once again, in this 70th edition of the race, that proved to be the
case. The 60 minutes to decide the grid were very intense and uncertain
right to the very last moment. Congratulations to Leclerc for his third pole
at his home race, but also to the other 19 drivers because seeing them fly
around these streets brushing the guardrails is always breath-taking.
Leclerc was already quickest yesterday and today he repeated that
performance, but it was still a close fight, with three different drivers
topping the time sheets in the three segments that make up the session and
the time differences were very small, as can be seen from the fact that the
top 15 in Q1 were all covered by less than four tenths of a second.
“From a technical point of view, the C5 proved it can perform very well on a
track like this one and with this type of surface. Compared to last year’s
qualifying, the times are noticeably quicker, pole by over a second, which
is also quicker than the simulations provided by the teams (1’10”500).
“We have had plenty of excitement today and now we can expect a race that
should have a fairly predictable outcome with a one-stop strategy pretty
much obligatory, featuring the Medium and Hard tyres. Those who opt to start
on the C3 will aim to extend the first stint as much as possible, hoping for
an eventual Safety Car to give them a cheap pit stop in terms of time taken.
In fact, it’s quite difficult to predict the ideal pit stop window as that
will depend on whether or not incidents on track create any opportunities.
But in theory, they would be between laps 25 and 35 for those on a
Medium-Hard strategy and between 45 and 55 for those running Hard-Medium. We
have less than 24 hours to wait to see if this turns out to be the case.”
FORMULA 2
Taylor Barnard took his first ever win in the FIA Formula 2 Championship
thanks to a great drive which saw him keep the lead from start to finish in
the Sprint Race, giving AIX Racing its first victory in this category. The
British driver fended off the attentions of Gabriel Bortoleto (Invicta
Racing), even in the tense closing stages when the race was red flagged,
having previously witnessed the use of a physical and virtual Safety Car,
when Zane Maloney (Rodin Motorsport) and Kush Maini (Invicta Racing) tangled
at Rascasse on lap 22. Bortoleto thus secured his second consecutive podium,
after finishing second in the Imola Feature Race while Dennis Hauger (MP
Motorsport) was third. As for the tyres, it is worth noting that eleven
drivers made the most of the red flag in the closing stages to switch to the
Supersoft in the hope of making up some places at the restart, but it didn’t
pay off for them given that the Soft proved still quick enough and the
performance delta to the softest compound was not enough to make overtaking
a realistic possibility.
FORMULA 3
Nikola Tsolov (ART Grand Prix) took his maiden Formula 3 win in the Monaco
Sprint Race, making the most of starting from the pole position. MP
Motorsport’s Tim Tramnitz finished second after passing Tsolov’s team-mate,
Laurens van Hoepen on the opening lap and then fending off the attentions of
those behind all race long, thus relegating the Dutchman to the third step
of the podium. The race was red flagged shortly after the start and was
again neutralised around half-distance, which made life a little tricky for
the drivers during the tyre warm-up phase. Those who did the best job of
managing this then enjoyed the benefit of lower degradation, although it
didn’t make much difference in terms of track position given the difficulty
of overtaking here. |
