 © REUTERS Charles Leclerc takes his 24th career pole and Ferrari's 250th Formula One pole position in his home race at the Monaco Grand Prix. Charles is joined by Oscar Piastri in P2 and Carlos Sainz in P3, in a qualifying which includes the shocking early exit of Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso in Q1 and the unexpected addition of Alpine and Williams in Q3 for the first time this season. Both Pierre and Alex will start in the top ten on Sunday for the first time this season. Max Verstappen's chance of a 9th consecutive pole position was dashed when he hit the wall at the end of Q3 and ended up with a 6th place start for the race tomorrow. Lewis Hamilton and his Mercedes could only manage a P7 start after finishing in the top three in all free practice sessions this weekend, with his team mate George Russell starting in P5. After Qualifying, the Stewards investigated two incidents of impeding with Sainz on Albon and they took no further action and no further action against Hulkenberg and Ocon. Both Haas drivers failed a technical check and were disqualified from Qualifying. Both Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg will start from the pit lane for Sunday's race, promoting all the other drivers behind them up one or two places.  © McLaren Media Free Practice 3Top 10 Results 1) Charles Leclerc 1:11.369 2) Max Verstappen 1:11.566 3) Lewis Hamilton 1:11.710 4) Oscar Piastri 1:11.901 5) Sergio Perez. 1:11.923 6) George Russell 1:11.968 7) Carlos Sainz 1:11.979 8) Lando Norris 1:11.988 9) Yuki Tsunoda 1:11.991 10) Fernando Alonso 1:12.087 The final Free Practice of the weekend was once again dominated by Charles Leclerc, who topped the timesheet ahead of Max Verstappen by 0.197 seconds. Lewis Hamilton again finished in the top three for the final practice session. Free Practice 3 started slow, with George Russell taking to the track first, followed by the two McLarens. Mercedes fixed the issues George discussed yesterday with the vibrations and steering. During the first part of the session, there was very little activity on the track, with only Kevin Magnussen posting a time for the first ten minutes. The only crash was from Kick Sauber's Valtteri Bottas, who clipped the wall at the second Swimming Pool chicane. This blocked the track for Lewis to get past and caused a brief red flag. McLaren continued to struggle for most of the session with Oscar briefly going off track after a lock up and Lando seemingly struggling for speed compared to Imola and Miami. Both Aston Martins started with a different strategy than the other teams. They did long runs on the medium tyres before switching to the soft tyres later in the session. The fine margins, traffic and quick laps will make qualifying an interesting session.  © Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool Q1Out in Q1 16) Fernando Alonso (Aston Martin) 17) Logan Sargeant (Williams) 18) Sergio Perez (Red Bull) 19) Valtteri Bottas (Sauber) 20) Zhou Guanyu (Sauber) During the first 18 minutes of qualifying, the drivers were lined up early, waiting to leave the pit lane, led by Lewis Hamilton. Everyone took to the track immediately except the Ferraris and Hulkenberg's Haas. In what was arguably the most important qualifying of the year, the leaderboard was a constant shuffle of positions. Each driver took turns at the top, from the Haas drivers to George Russell, Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen, Oscar Piastri, and Charles Leclerc. At the end of the session, under 0.3 seconds covered P1 to P11, and 0.568 seconds covered the top 18 drivers. Sergio Perez and Fernando Alonso's chances of pole were taken away, as both missed out on Q2, along with Logan, Bottas, and Guanyu.  © McLaren Media Q2Out in Q2 11) Esteban Ocon (Alpine) 12) Nico Hulkenberg (Haas) 13) Daniel Ricciardo (RB) 14) Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) 15) Kevin Magnussen (Haas) During Q2, some traffic pressure was eased, but Hulkenberg and Ocon were noted for impeding, which will be looked at after the session. It was a challenging session for the Mercedes duo, with Lewis and George finding themselves in the 9th and 10th positions. However, they put in faster laps at the end of the session to make it through to Q1. Sainz, Verstappen, Piastri, and Norris all topped the Q2 leaderboard, with Norris producing the fastest time during the session, 1:10.732, over 1.2 seconds quicker than pole position last year. For the first time this season, Pierre Gasly and Alpine, along with Alex Albon in his Williams, made it into Q3.  © Scuderia Ferrari Media Q3Starting Top 10 1) Charles Leclerc 1:10.270 2) Oscar Piastri + 0.154 3) Carlos Sainz + 0.248 4) Lando Norris + 0.272 5) George Russell + 0.273 6) Max Verstappen + 0.297 7) Lewis Hamilton + 0.351 8) Yuki Tsunoda + 0.588 9) Alex Albon + 0.678 10) Pierre Gasly +1.041 During Q3, there was a multi-way battle for pole between McLaren, Ferrari and Max Verstappen. In the end, it was Charles Leclerc who came out victorious with pole position in his home race on Sunday. Charles Leclerc made a statement by topping the leaderboard early on in the session with an impressive 1:10.418, and he increased his lead even more in the closing stages with a 1:10.270. Oscar Piastri gave Charles a good challenge, finishing P2 with a 1:10.424, splitting the Ferraris in the top three. Max Verstappen missed out on pole position and could only manage a P6 start for Sunday's race after hitting the wall on his final lap in Q3. For the first time this season, Alex Albon and his Williams, along with Pierre Gasly and his Alpine, will both start in the top ten tomorrow. Along with Yuki Tsunoda finishing in P8 in his RB. After qualifying, Charles said, "it was nice, the feeling after qualifying and after the qualifying lap is very special. I'm very happy about the lap, the excitement is so high that it feels really good." However, Charles has been in this position before. This is his 12th pole steak without a win and his 3rd pole in Monaco without a win; he acknowledged this and went on to say, "I know more often than not that qualifying is not everything as much as it helps for Sunday's race, we need to put everything together and in the past years we didn't manage to do so." But he expressed his optimism by continuing on to say that Ferrari is a "stronger team and in a stronger position, so I'm sure we can achieve great things tomorrow, and a win is the target."  Anny Wooldridge
Writer @ F1 Journal
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