Pierre Gasly Achieves Historic Pole Position at Monza

Pierre Gasly has waited nine long years for this.

Under the late-summer light at Monza, on the same strip of asphalt where he stunned the sport with victory in 2020, the Frenchman finally etched his name onto another line of Formula 1 history: pole position.

Not just any pole. His first. At the Temple of Speed.

Gasly leaves it late at Monza

With two minutes left in Q3, the pit lane fell quiet. Ten cars, ten drivers, one last shot. Gasly sat third, helmet off, eyes fixed on the timing screens as the garages hummed with tension.

When the pack rolled back out, George Russell struck first. The Mercedes driver laid down a 1:21.846, good enough for provisional pole and a serious marker under pressure.

Gasly went last.

As the clock hit zero, the Alpine flashed across the line. Purple sectors. Clean exit from Parabolica. The time popped up: 1:21.786.

Pole by six hundredths.

“Let’s go! I’ve been waiting for that one!” he roared over the radio, the scream cutting through the Alpine garage as mechanics erupted around the monitors.

Charles Leclerc, fourth on the day, pulled up in parc fermé, climbed out and walked straight to Gasly, offering a firm handshake. The Frenchman stepped out of his Alpine, raised a clenched fist to the grandstands and drank in the moment he had chased since his debut.

“It was amazing. Thank you everyone. It was an incredible quali,” he said afterwards. “From the first lap in Q1, I felt very good in the car. Trying to chip a little bit away every single session and then, yeah, in the end, it felt like a very good lap.

“But I’m so happy. It’s been nine years trying to chase and get the opportunity to get a pole position. Win my first race in Monza, get my first pole position on this track I think is something special.”

Monza, again, had become Gasly’s stage.

Russell’s near-miss and a chess subplot

Russell will line up alongside him on the front row, close but not close enough on a day when Mercedes looked poised to lock down pole.

The duel between the pair had actually started long before the lights went green for qualifying. As Russell revealed, the two had been playing chess in the moments leading up to the session.

“He beat me there, and I thought, ‘Well, I think I’ll beat you in qualifying’ and here we are. He’s ahead of me again,” Russell said with a laugh. “So huge congrats to him.”

On the stopwatch and on the board, it was Gasly 2–0.

Grid shake-up behind the front row

On pure pace, Oscar Piastri put his McLaren third on the timesheets, but his Saturday came with a sting. A grid penalty for impeding drops him to sixth, reshuffling the pack behind the front row.

That promotes others into the spotlight. Franco Colapinto, in the second Alpine, inherits seventh on the grid, a strong launchpad for the Argentine alongside a teammate starting from pole at one of the most volatile first corners in motorsport.

Lando Norris, winner of the last two races, finds himself just behind in eighth for McLaren, forced into attack mode from the start if he wants to extend his hot streak.

The biggest twist, though, comes from the championship leader. Kimi Antonelli qualified only seventh in the Mercedes, then took an engine penalty that will see him start from the pit lane. From there, any damage limitation will feel like a rescue mission.

A pole against a bruising backdrop

Gasly’s pole comes layered with context and emotion. Only 24 hours earlier, he had watched a Monaco podium slip through his fingers months after the chequered flag.

Initially, the Frenchman stood third in the principality, only to be hit with two 10-second penalties for speeding in the pit lane, dropping him to seventh and promoting Red Bull Racing’s Isack Hadjar into third.

Alpine fought back, petitioning for a review of the penalties and winning, briefly restoring Gasly to third place. Then Red Bull Racing and McLaren countered with their own petition. This time, they prevailed. The penalties were reinstated. The podium was gone again.

It was a harsh reminder of how thin the margins can be in this sport, how quickly champagne can turn to frustration.

One day later, Gasly answered in the most emphatic way available on a Saturday: by planting his car at the very front of the grid at Monza.

A career circling back to its defining stage

Gasly’s journey to this point has never followed a straight line. He arrived in Formula 1 in 2017 at the Malaysian Grand Prix, drafted in at Toro Rosso as a replacement for Daniil Kvyat. The team would become AlphaTauri, and now Racing Bulls, but Monza has remained a constant landmark in his story.

It was here, in 2020, that he seized his only F1 victory so far, a chaotic, emotional Italian Grand Prix win for AlphaTauri that instantly became one of the defining underdog stories of the hybrid era.

His record since then underlines his resilience. Five podiums in total:

• 2nd at the 2019 Brazil Grand Prix with Toro Rosso
• 1st at the 2020 Italian Grand Prix with AlphaTauri
• 3rd at the 2021 Azerbaijan Grand Prix with AlphaTauri
• 3rd at the 2023 Dutch Grand Prix with Alpine
• 3rd at the 2024 São Paulo Grand Prix with Alpine

In 2023 he joined Alpine, the French manufacturer finally pairing a French driver with a French team again. A year later, he committed his future with a contract extension through 2028, betting that this project could return him to the front.

On Saturday at Monza, that bet looked a little less speculative.

The next step

Now comes the hard part.

Pole at Monza is a prize, but it is also a target. Gasly will lead the field down to the Variante del Rettifilo with Russell on his outside, a hungry midfield behind, and a title leader launching from the pit lane with nothing to lose.

He has already proved he can win here. The question now is whether that first pole position can be the spark that turns a single, unforgettable Monza victory into the start of something bigger.