They said bad things come in threes.
For Leclerc, that has been a string of no finishes or starts at his home race. However is 2022 the year we see that change?
The monegasque driver has just taken pole position around the streets of Monte Carlo, and securing another scuderia front row lockout at the principality. Unfortunately his Tifosi teammate Carlos Sainz did not have as clean a day, as he crashed into the already crashed Red Bull of Sergio Perez right at the very end of Q3.
The Mexican Defence Minister put his Red Bull into the wall at Portier as he lost the rear of the car, and Sainz got a major wave of FOMO so duly copied him and swung the back of his Ferrari into the front right of the Red Bull. Sergio’s teammate and current WDC Max Verstappen could only manage P4, having seen his final run aborted due to the aforementioned crash.
Outside the top four, the McLaren of Lando Norris enjoyed another good outing in his Papaya patrol wagon. He put his McLaren P5 and ahead of both Mercedes’ which will leave a sour taste in the mouth of the Brackley beast. The German backed team saw their new recuit George Russell qualify P6 and 7 time WDC Lewis Hamilton put his Mercedes only P8. They formed a British sandwich with a Spanish filling of Fernando Alonso in his Alpine, who put in a great lap to qualify P7.
Rounding out the top 10 is Sebastian Vettel, who had a very good day in a realtively uncompetitive Aston Martin to put it P9 and Esteban Ocon has made a welcome return to the top 10 in qualifying by putting his Alpine P10.
Q2 saw Yuki Tsunoda miss out on Q3 by two tenths, and qualified above the F1 barista and porridge expert Valtteri Bottas. Underneath Bottas we see Kevin Magnussen qualify P13 and Schumacher qualify P15 which will come as a crumb of comfort the American F1 outfit. They are split by the second McLaren driver Daniel Ricciardo, who will surely be looking over his shoulder.
Alexander Albon almost did enough to get his uncompetitive Williams into Q2, but ultimately missed out on the chance and crossed the line in P16 for tomorrows race. He finished one place of Red Bull alumni Pierre Gasly, who had his run compromised by a red flag at the end of Q1. The flag was thrown rather pre-emptively by an over zealous marshall, and meant he was not able to get a final lap in. He ultimately starts the grand prix in P17.
The Canadian duo of Lance Stroll and Nicholas Latifi start P18 and P19 respectively, and will be hoping for some luck coming their way tomorrow. They start ahead of the F1 newbie Guanyu Zhou, who was also hampered by the red flag and was unable to get off the bottom of the grid.
