Leclerc Dominates To Take Pole In Monaco

In another dominating performance, Charles Leclerc powered his Ferrari to pole for Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix.

Leclerc swept all three rounds of qualifying, finishing up Q3 with a 1:11.376 to top fellow Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz. 

“It is very special. I’m so incredibly happy,” Leclerc said. “It’s been a very smooth weekend until now; I knew the pace was in the car I just had to do the job and it went perfectly. That last lap before the red flag was very very good. But anyway, it didn’t change anything for us.”

The Red Bull Racing duo of Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez followed suit behind the Ferrari’s in 3rd and 4th. 

A red flag in Q3 ended the session, after Perez crashed, collecting Saniz in the mess as well. 

McLaren’s Lando Norris rounded out the top-five on the starting grid, with teammate Daniel Ricciardo qualifying a distant 14th. 

The Mercedes team of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton showed promise, with Russell slotting in 6th, while 7-time world champion Hamilton qualified 8th. 

“The ride of the car has been our biggest limitation all weekend and while P6 is not a result to be celebrating, I think we pretty much maximized it out there with the package we have,” Russell said. “The team has worked incredibly hard to give us the most compliant set-up possible, but we saw in Barcelona that our strengths were speed on the straights and the high-speed corners – and there’s none of either in Monaco! So looking at it objectively, there’s no reason we should be any higher up today. From my point of view, looking to tomorrow I’m thinking: bring on the rain! Nobody knows how the tires will be in the wet, so we need to keep it out of the wall, be there at the end and roll the dice on strategy if we can.”

It was a trying day for the Haas F1 team, with both drivers failing to make it past Q2 (Magnussen 13th, Schumacher 15th).