All good things come in threes. Charles Leclerc has already secured pole position twice at the Monaco GP, but has yet to win at his home race. Today, the Ferrari driver raced to pole position in the principality for the third time in his Formula 1 career in qualifying, and he did so with a bang. After the training sessions, he was already the clear favorite for first place on the grid, but the road to getting there was ultimately more turbulent than had been planned.
It started before qualifying. After a dominant best time in FP3, the technology on the SF-24 suddenly started to make a name for itself. “The weekend was incredible until after FP3, when there was suddenly a problem with my engine and we had to change the engine at the last minute,” he said.
A very bad qualifying start: Leclerc-Ferrari steals advertising banner
“That was a bit tricky. But luckily it had no further consequences for the rest of my weekend,” Leclerc continued. But the hurdles he had to overcome during qualifying were not over yet. During Q2, a second disruptive object came into action around the 3.337-kilometer track.
Leclerc caught an object on his front wing, which he himself described as a sponsor banner. It was taken directly by the right end plate of the front wing and forced a stop at a critical point in the session. At this point he was already dangerously close to the retirement places in Q1.
Pole position thanks to wing adjustment
“It was a difficult situation. In Monaco you just want to do normal laps in qualifying. That’s why I prayed that we wouldn’t have any yellow or red flags afterwards,” said Leclerc. His prayers were answered, even though the Monegasque was never outside the top 15.
But even without foreign objects on the car, Leclerc then seemed vulnerable for the first time this weekend. Despite a very small gap, he only managed P4 in Q2, behind the two McLarens and Verstappen. He quickly found the explanation for this: “In Q2 we had some problems with the balance of the car. I couldn’t find the right feeling.”
These difficulties could be related to the fact that the track gained grip on the one hand and the track temperatures dropped slightly during the session on the other. In any case, a setup change on the front wing – a setup adjustment that is allowed under Parc Ferme – was able to solve the problem.
“We made a few modifications, especially to the front wing, as well as to the tools and my driving style,” explained Leclerc. Q3 was the only qualifying section that actually went as expected for Ferrari and Leclerc. There were no problems to report there, apart from the fact that a McLaren was once again hot on his heels in the form of Oscar Piastri.
Will Charles Leclerc win his first Monaco GP?
But Piastri was unable to keep up with Leclerc’s improvement on the second run. For Leclerc, the 24th pole position of his Formula 1 career was a done deal. In Monaco, pole is often seen as half the battle to winning a race.
Leclerc knows from experience that it is not quite that easy: in 2022, a suboptimal Ferrari strategy in the rain cost him the chance of victory. A year earlier, his car had collapsed on the way to the grid after Leclerc had had an accident at the end of qualifying the day before. The good news for Leclerc: This time he left his Ferrari intact and, according to the forecasts, no rain should reach the Mediterranean coast of the city-state during the race.