Antonelli steals pole position from Verstappen at the Monaco Grand Prix

Verstappen was on course to take pole in Monaco, however, on his final lap, the championship leader managed to improve to snatch pole position from the four-time world champion. Only 0.043 seconds separated the two drivers.

Leclerc endured a difficult Q3 and finished behind his teammate Hamilton after also hitting the wall on his final lap. George Russell was four tenths slower than his Italian teammate and will start from P6 alongside Isack Hadjar. The two McLarens will line up on the fourth row of the grid, with Oscar Piastri ahead of Lando Norris.

In Q1, Amid heavy traffic, with all 22 cars on track simultaneously, drivers were consistently setting lap times on the same set of soft tyres. The first red flag of the day was caused by Gabriel Bortoleto in the Audi, who broke his suspension on the entry to the Nouvelle Chicane and was forced to stop with around two minutes remaining.

That left little time for drivers to improve further, however, Carlos Sainz just managed to get a lap in and make it through to Q2. As a result, the two Haas drivers were eliminated along with the two Cadillacs and Aston Martins.

With Bortoleto’s incident in the first session, the drivers hoping to reach Q3 already had one fewer rival to worry about. The frontrunners had little trouble progressing to the final session of the day and were joined by Liam Lawson, and Pierre Gasly, who narrowly finished ahead of the two Williams drivers, Alex Albon and Sainz.