Sixty thousandths that can change a career
Pierre Gasly will start from pole in the Italian Grand Prix. The Alpine driver grabbed top spot at Monza a few hours ago with a lap of 1’21”786, beating George Russell by just 60 thousandths.
Oscar Piastri completes the front row, 180 thousandths back. Behind them, the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton finished fourth and fifth, at 218 and 225 thousandths respectively, in an Italian cathedral that was hoping for a bit more. Max Verstappen could manage only sixth, 284 thousandths off the pace.
The session revolved around one very specific trick: slipstreaming. Teams spent it towing their drivers through the wake of their team-mates, with wildly mixed results. Alpine did it better than anyone, and Franco Colapinto landed eighth on the back of it.
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The Frenchman strikes first, Alpine follows suit
It is Gasly’s first pole position in Formula 1. The driver from Normandy has been racing since 2017 and had never put a car on the front row on a Saturday before.
To find the last Frenchman on pole, you have to go back to 1997, when Jean Alesi pulled it off in a Benetton, also at Monza. Twenty-nine years of waiting for French motorsport, wiped out in one flying lap.
For the team, the symbolism is just as strong. Alpine had not taken pole since the name change that erased Renault from the grid five years ago.
Monza, once again Monza
The Lombardy circuit has always had a strange grip on the Frenchman. Gasly scored the most unlikely win of his career here in 2020, in a chaotic race where he held off Carlos Sainz all the way to the chequered flag.
But Sunday is another matter. Pole guarantees nothing at a track where slipstreaming often decides the order by the first braking zone. Russell and Piastri are right there, and Norris, down in ninth, will have ground to make up.
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