Pierre Gasly saw off George Russell’s chess challenge and then beat him again behind the wheel of his Alpine to spring the shock of the season by securing pole position for Sunday’s Italian Grand Prix.
Gasly upset the odds – and temporarily dented Russell’s hopes of fully capitalising on title rival Kimi Antonelli’s engine penalty which leaves the home favourite 20th on the grid – to secure the very first pole of his career in his 190th appearance.
Russell starts second and will still be expected to win Sunday’s 53-lap race and eat into Mercedes team-mate Antonelli’s 59-point lead. But the day belonged to Gasly following a contentious build-up for the Frenchman and his Alpine team.
open image in galleryHis improbable triumph arrived 24 hours after Alpine boss Flavio Briatore explosively accused an FIA judge of having a “working relationship” with McLaren following the British team’s appeal which saw Gasly stripped of his podium from June’s Monaco Grand Prix for a second time.
Gasly admitted it had been an “emotional” weekend, during which he has turned to chess as a distraction.
“Since the drivers’ briefing last night, I figured out that he (Russell) is obsessed with chess and so am I,” explained the 30-year-old after he clinched the first pole for the Renault-owned team since 2009.
“There are a few of us in the paddock who are. We have exchanged our IDs on Chess.com and we had a little game going on.
“I won yesterday and then we had another game that carried on into today. I was feeling confident because I was picking off piece after piece and Ben (Thorpe – Gasly’s performance coach) told me: ‘You are getting George here, but he is going to get you in a few minutes’ and I thought ‘f*** off’.
open image in gallery“It turned out it worked out quite well. We are competitive on the track and off the track, too, and we have to find our little battles wherever we can.”
Of their chess duel, Russell, who finished just 0.060 seconds behind Gasly, said: “We had a game 15 minutes before qualifying. He beat me and I thought to myself: ‘Well, I will beat you in qualifying’ and here we are. He’s ahead of me again!
“I am disappointed I am not on pole but it is a great place to start tomorrow. I am definitely in with a shot of the win and I am confident I have the pace.”
Like Russell, Lewis Hamilton is also 59 points off the title pace and he spoke earlier this week about his dream of winning Ferrari’s home race. But Hamilton qualified only fifth on an afternoon where he failed to deliver on his own pre-event hype.
Hamilton’s presence in Q3 appeared in grave danger after he could set only the 10th quickest time, with Audi’s Gabriel Bortoleto poised to hand him a humbling early exit.
open image in galleryHowever, Hamilton’s blushes were spared by just one thousandth of a second.
“We are through,” said Hamilton’s race engineer, Carlo Santi. “That was very tight.”
“Ah, f*** me,” said Hamilton in response. His first run in Q3 left him in ninth, almost eight tenths off the pace, but he improved dramatically with his second lap to haul him up the order, 0.225 sec slower than Gasly.
He then benefited from Oscar Piastri’s three-place grid drop for blocking Liam Lawson to upgrade to fourth, a place behind Charles Leclerc in the other Ferrari. Lando Norris starts a disappointing ninth.