Leclerc lives up to expectations to give Ferrari its 250th pole

25 May 2024 | 19:27 Europe/Amsterdam Leclerc lives up to expectations to give Ferrari its 250th pole Featured-Quali-MC24 Conditions-Saturday-MC24-EN After being quickest on Friday, Charles Leclerc today took his third Monaco Grand Prix pole position, having previously secured the top spot on the grid in 2021 and 2022, thus joining drivers of the calibre of Niki Lauda, Stirling Moss and Michael Schumacher on the list of three time pole sitters in the Principality. This was the Monegasque’s 24th pole, which puts him equal twelfth with the aforementioned Lauda and Nelson Piquet. It’s Ferrari’s 13th pole here and its 250th overall.The front two rows of the grid will feature two Ferraris and two McLarens tomorrow afternoon. Alongside Leclerc (1’10”270) will be Australia’s Oscar Piastri (1’10”424). Behind them will be Spain’s Carlos Sainz (1’10”518) and Englishman Lando Norris (1’10”542). THE DAY ON TRACK As always happens at this very unusual track, the third free practice session was given over almost entirely to finding the cars’ maximum performance, because of how important qualifying is in deciding the outcome of the race. That can also be seen from looking at the tyre usage chart, with only Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll using anything other than the Soft, specifically the Medium, for one actual run.Obviously, everyone used the C5 throughout qualifying and it proved capable of delivering a good level of performance even over longer runs than are usually seen in the grid deciding session.It’s worth noting the different approaches that teams and drivers adopted when it came to preparing the tyres for the timed lap, with some choosing to do an additional preparation lap, confirming a trend that had emerged yesterday, even in higher temperatures than in the first two free practice sessions.The Pirelli Pole Position Award was presented to Charles Leclerc  by the English actor, Nicholas Galitzine, best known for playing the role of Prince Harry in “Red White and Royal Blue” and the son George in the “Mary and George” miniseries alongside Julianne Moore. Currently, he is in the limelight starring alongside Ann Hathaway in “The Idea of You” available on Amazon Prime. PPPAW24-EN Pole man Charles Leclerc, Scuderia Ferrari, receives his Pirelli Pole Position Award from actor Nicholas Galitzine CIRCUIT DE MONACO, MONACO - MAY 25: Pole man Charles Leclerc, Scuderia Ferrari, receives his Pirelli Pole Position Award from actor Nicholas Galitzine during the Monaco GP at Circuit de Monaco on Saturday May 25, 2024 in Monte Carlo, Monaco. (Photo by Glenn Dunbar / LAT Images) MARIO ISOLA - PIRELLI DIRECTOR OF MOTORSPORT“In Monaco, much of the excitement is usually to be experienced on Saturday and once again, in this 70th edition of the race, that proved to be the case. The 60 minutes to decide the grid were very intense and uncertain right to the very last moment. Congratulations to Leclerc for his third pole at his home race, but also to the other 19 drivers because seeing them fly around these streets brushing the guardrails is always breath-taking. Leclerc was already quickest yesterday and today he repeated that performance, but it was still a close fight, with three different drivers topping the time sheets in the three segments that make up the session and the time differences were very small, as can be seen from the fact that the top 15 in Q1 were all covered by less than four tenths of a second.“From a technical point of view, the C5 proved it can perform very well on a track like this one and with this type of surface. Compared to last year’s qualifying, the times are noticeably quicker, pole by over a second, which is also quicker than the simulations provided by the teams (1’10”500).“We have had plenty of excitement today and now we can expect a race that should have a fairly predictable outcome with a one-stop strategy pretty much obligatory, featuring the Medium and Hard tyres. Those who opt to start on the C3 will aim to extend the first stint as much as possible, hoping for an eventual Safety Car to give them a cheap pit stop in terms of time taken. In fact, it’s quite difficult to predict the ideal pit stop window as that will depend on whether or not incidents on track create any opportunities. But in theory, they would be between laps 25 and 35 for those on a Medium-Hard strategy and between 45 and 55 for those running Hard-Medium. We have less than 24 hours to wait to see if this turns out to be the case.” 08-MC24-Quali3-EN 08-MC24-QualiCompare-EN FORMULA 2Taylor Barnard took his first ever win in the FIA Formula 2 Championship thanks to a great drive which saw him keep the lead from start to finish in the Sprint Race, giving AIX Racing its first victory in this category. The British driver fended off the attentions of Gabriel Bortoleto (Invicta Racing), even in the tense closing stages when the race was red flagged, having previ