Pierre Gasly has waited nine long years for this. When it finally came, it arrived at the place that defines his Formula 1 story.
On a hot Saturday at Monza, the Frenchman delivered the lap of his life to take a first career pole position for Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix, writing a new line into the history books at the very circuit where he claimed his only F1 win back in 2020.
Gasly’s last-lap dagger
For most of Q3, Gasly wasn’t the headline act. With two minutes left on the clock, all 10 remaining drivers were parked in the garages, catching their breath before one last assault. Gasly sat third. Close, but not quite there.
The final runs changed everything.
George Russell threw down the gauntlet first. The Mercedes driver hooked up a clean lap, stopped the clocks at 1:21.846 and grabbed provisional pole. It looked solid. It looked enough.
Gasly, the last man on track as the chequered flag fell, had other ideas.
Threading his Alpine through Monza’s high-speed sweeps, he found just enough time in the final sector to snatch pole by six thousandths of a second, clocking a 1:21.786. When the radio crackled to life, the emotion poured out.
"Let's go! I've been waiting for that one!" he roared, the release of nearly a decade of frustration and near-misses bursting through the team radio.
Back in parc fermé, Charles Leclerc, fourth on the day, walked straight over to offer a handshake. Gasly climbed out, punched the air and soaked in the moment that had been eluding him since his debut in 2017.
"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."
Special barely covers it.
Russell denied, Gasly perfect
Russell will line up alongside Gasly on the front row, the Mercedes man left to rue just how slim the margin proved to be. Their duel had actually started long before the lights went green.
He revealed the pair were killing time before qualifying with a game of chess.
"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 wry smile. "So huge congrats to him."
Behind them, the grid tells its own story of penalties and shuffled fortunes.
McLaren’s Oscar Piastri delivered the third-fastest time on pure pace, but a grid drop for impeding means he will start only sixth. That promotes others into the mix and scrambles the strategic picture for Sunday.
Championship leader Kimi Antonelli, also in Mercedes colours, endured an even more punishing blow. He qualified seventh but will start from the pit lane after an engine penalty, turning his race into a damage-limitation exercise from the moment the lights go out.
Piastri’s Alpine teammate Franco Colapinto inherits seventh on the grid, while Lando Norris — the man who has won the last two races — will sit just behind him in eighth in the McLaren, ominously placed to attack.
A pole on the back of heartbreak
Gasly’s pole comes with a sting in the background.
Only a day earlier, his Monaco podium — celebrated three months ago — was stripped away after a messy, drawn-out penalty saga. He had originally finished third in the principality, only to be hit with a pair of 10-second penalties for speeding in the pit lane moments after the champagne had been sprayed, dropping him to seventh and promoting Red Bull Racing’s Isack Hadjar to the podium.
Alpine appealed, arguing their case and briefly winning. Gasly’s third place was reinstated. Then Red Bull Racing and McLaren countered with their own petition. This time, they prevailed. The penalties returned. Gasly’s podium disappeared.
To walk into Monza on the back of that and then produce a lap good enough for pole says plenty about his resilience — and about Alpine’s ability to give him a car he can lean on when it counts.
The French outfit signed him in 2023 and moved quickly last year to lock him in with a contract extension through 2028. On days like this, that decision looks shrewd.
A career that keeps circling back to Monza
Gasly’s relationship with this place runs deep.
He made his Formula 1 debut in 2017, stepping in for Daniil Kvyat at Toro Rosso, the team that would later become AlphaTauri and is now Racing Bulls. Three years later, he stunned the paddock with an emotional victory at the 2020 Italian Grand Prix for AlphaTauri — his first and so far only F1 win.
That triumph remains the standout result in a career that has brought five podiums:
- 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
Now, Monza has given him something new: his first pole.
The numbers tell one story. The setting tells another. The same old trees, the same old grandstands, the same old roars from the tifosi — and a driver who keeps finding his biggest moments at this temple of speed.
On Sunday, Gasly will lead a Formula 1 field away from the front for the first time in his life, with Russell’s Mercedes in his mirrors, Norris charging from the pack, and a title leader starting from the pit lane.
Monza has already delivered one twist. It rarely stops at just one.
