Everyone watching qualifying saw Max Verstappen go green in the first 2 sectors in Monaco and went “well that’s pole for Fernando Alonso”. But then the Spaniard had pole ripped away from him as the Dutch driver managed to pull it out of the bag in sector three, in the end dropping on form Alonso to P2 with a margin of 0.084.
Aston Martin can still be pleased with his performance in the principality and even had Sergio Perez not crashed out just minutes into qualifying, on the pace we saw from Alonso today, it would seem the Mexican may not have had much say in how the front row played out in the end.
A grinning Alonso looked on a high in Parc Ferme, as his team in the garage celebrated their star driver’s result this Saturday afternoon:
“I feel good, obviously pole position means a lot here in Monaco, but today Max was a little bit faster which is a shame but I think first row on the grid is quite a big thing for us here. Last sector was our weakest point of the circuit. Let’s see tomorrow what we can do in terms of the strategy if there is any weather coming or something but we will try to win.”
It seems like so long ago now that Alonso and Aston Martin were downplaying the possibility of beating Red Bull on pure pace at any point this season and off the line tomorrow the experienced elder statesman of the F1 grid will be looking for any opportunity to grab the lead from Verstappen:
“I mean it’s very short into turn one but yeah we have normally a good start this year, Max is a little bit inconsistent maybe it is one of those bad ones tomorrow….”
With the potential for rain during tomorrow’s race or if Verstappen has one of those bad starts Alonso referred to, who knows, maybe we could see that 33rd win for Alonso tomorrow and I’m sure he would be a happy man to do it at such a prestigious Grand Prix.
