What was remarkable about Pierre Gasly’s maiden pole position at the Italian Grand Prix is how unremarkable it was.

Unlike F1’s typical giant-killing performance — like Gasly’s first win in Monza in 2020 — it required no bizarre circumstances or special conditions for him to nail while others floundered.

This was a straight fight with F1’s big guns, and when the session ended and all the laps were completed, Gasly had steered Formula 1’s sixth-quickest car to the quickest time.

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This is Gasly’s 10th season of Formula 1. He’d never previously qualified higher than fourth and has never started higher than second.

Alpine had been enduring a similarly interminable drought. It had been 17 years since a car built in Enstone, UK, had last started from pole, dating back to Fernando Alonso’s 2009 Hungarian Grand Prix qualifying-topping performance, when the team was still known as Renault.

This sensational lap had been a long time coming.

“Quite a lot of emotions,” Gasly enthused. “I’m just extremely happy for the whole team. I’m extremely happy with our performance.

“It’s been nine years I’m in Formula 1 trying to give my best absolutely every single weekend, and it’s not every time we get a car to fight for pole position.

“Today it was the case, and I’m really, really happy, really proud, to have seized this chance and to make it work.

“It was a heck of a lap. We’ve been on it since the first lap in Q1, it’s been feeling good.

“Nine years waiting for that moment, that feeling. I got my first win here in Monza, and now I get my first pole position, so it’s definitely a special place to me.”

HOW GASLY GOT IT RIGHT…

George Russell had been the favourite for pole position all weekend. Not only had the Mercedes driver been quick throughout, but he had the benefit of his teammate being devoted to slipstreaming him all afternoon — the Italian was due to start from the back of the grid with an engine penalty no matter what.

Everything looked on track for the predictable result halfway through Q3, when Russell had provisional pole.

But it was close — much closer than expected.

Five drivers were within 0.141s of his best lap. Gasly was only 0.072s adrift.

Slipstream was key in Monza, where some drivers hypothesised it could be worth up to half a second. Track position, therefore, was key.

Q3 is always a game of chicken at the Temple of Speed, where no driver wants to be first on track, punching a hole in the air for everyone else.

Wait too late, though, and you could run out of time to set a lap at all.

Alpine, though, was happy to risk it. It sent Gasly and teammate Franco Colapinto out last, hoping to maximise the slipstream benefit. They crossed the line to start their final laps with 10s remaining.

Better, though, was that Gasly was positioned perfectly behind Lewis Hamilton, who himself was taking a slipstream from teammate Charles Leclerc.

“I managed to target slightly over 2.5s behind Lewis when he was going to be fast and drag me with him,” he said. “I think it was perfect execution.”

With the double slipstream, Gasly was one of only three drivers to improve in all three sectors of their final lap.

It vaulted him into top spot, just 0.06s quicker than Russell.

“I tried to leave everything I had out there,” he said.

“I knew it would be one of these laps that would be rewarded, but to the point to get the pole position, I didn’t expect that.”

Execution was key, but it wouldn’t have meant much without a competitive car.

On average this season Alpine has been the sixth-quickest qualifying car, 1.271s off the pace.

But it had some advantages coming to Monza.

The first was the Mercedes power unit, which clearly remains the class of the field. Six of the top 10 drivers in the speed trap were Mercedes-powered.

The second is a major upgrade package that debuted on Gasly’s car at the previous race. Alpine had been slipping backwards down the midfield for months, but this package was good enough to correct the slide, putting the car back in a well-balanced window that’s allowing Gasly and Colapinto to attack.

The third is somewhat counterintuitive but no less relevant. It’s not unusual to see midfield teams overperform at circuits like Monza, because the track rewards low downforce. Usually having more downforce is critical to performance, and a lack of downforce is why these midfield teams are ordinarily adrift of pole. Here, though, the lack of aerodynamic performance is actually a perverse benefit — so long as the car is balanced.

Racing Bulls, Audi, Haas and Cadillac all joined Alpine in having their best qualifying sessions of the season, being closer to pole than at any other race this year. Williams came close to doing the same, while Aston Martin still had an above-average performance despite the obvious disappointment of its underpowered Honda engine.

“The car balance is probably one of the best I’ve had so far this year,” Gasly said. “That gave me the confidence to attack all these corners, sliding around and playing around with the car, and we managed to make it work in that last run when everything mattered.

“It’s not down to one simple parameter. I think everybody did a very good job, and we’ve been rewarded for it.

…AND HOW MERCEDES GOT IT WRONG

But it was also important that some other key players did not do a very good job — and in some cases did quite a poor job.

Russell was favourite for pole and had advantages equal to Gasly’s. He had the same engine, and he had the added benefit of having Antonelli competing in qualifying only to give him the perfect slipstream, which he did.

What Mercedes didn’t have, however, was execution.

Perhaps it was because the team didn’t see Gasly’s threat coming until it was too late.

“They’ve looked strong the whole weekend, but we’ve often seen in Q1 some midfield teams have competitive laps … at the beginning of a session,” Russell said. “I didn’t think too much of it; I just thought they looked fast.

“Pierre clearly did a great job in Q1, but to be totally honest, I don’t think we thought they were in the fight.

“It goes to show what a great job he did and their team did to get the pole.”

It would be a stretch to say Mercedes was complacent, though. While Gasly at 0.072s off the pace after the first laps wasn’t ringing alarm bells, Oscar Piastri, Leclerc and Max Verstappen were all within that same margin.

It was all on the line when Mercedes sent out Antonelli and Russell in the middle of the pack for their final laps.

It began going wrong before the lap had even started.

Russell was behind Antonelli, who was warming up behind Verstappen. The Dutchman then hit the brakes unexpectedly early into Parabolica.

“Max just slammed on the brakes, and he didn’t want to be the lead car,” Russell said. “It’s just one of those things. You can’t control what other people do.

“Kimi was there to give me the slipstream, which he did perfectly on the first run, but obviously with Max, I think it also made it difficult for Kimi to know what to do as well, so it was just a little bit unfortunate.

“In hindsight it probably would have been better off not trying this, but we wanted to give it everything.”

Russell lost 0.213s in the first sector relative to his previous lap. He then set the quickest time of any driver in the middle sector and set a personal best in the final split.

Had he strung together his best sectors on a single lap, he would have been on pole by more than 0.15s.

Wolff, who later said Russell had “got done over” by Verstappen, slammed his computer monitor in the garage in frustration.

Russell is still well positioned to win the race from the front row. Alpine’s race pace is unlikely to be good enough to hold back faster cars.

But it is a complication, with both Ferrari drivers starting directly behind him — and this on a day Russell knows deep down he must maximise his score over Antonelli, who will be targeting a top-six finish at a minimum.

There should be an easy 15-point swing on the table for him. Anything less will feel like a missed opportunity.

HAMILTON WANTS TEAM ORDERS AFTER NEAR-DISASTER

Ferrari started the weekend with a one-two in FP1. Come qualifying, it flirted with having both cars embarrassingly knocked out in Q2.

The difference between abject failure and a second-row start was Gabriel Bortoleto sliding through the Ascari chicane on his final Q2 lap. It cost him bundles of time. Leclerc escaped just 0.008s to the good. Hamilton had only 0.001 in hard.

It was indicative of the team’s entire session. It had the car pace to contend for a spot on the front row — probably pole too, in retrospect, considering Alpine pinched it from Russell — but fumbled every step of the way.

In Q3 Hamilton’s car wasn’t even ready in time for his first lap, leaving him well adrift of the field and without a slipstream. He said that then put him off his game for his second lap because he didn’t have a reference for how powerful the slipstream was.

He qualified fifth, 0.007s behind Leclerc in fourth.

The only upside for Ferrari is that Piastri has been penalised from third to sixth, promoting both scarlet cars to the second row. On average a Ferrari car is gaining one place off the line every race.

But it does little to assuage the sting of another mishandled session — and after blowing up over radio at the Dutch Grand Prix over botched execution, Hamilton made an arguably more extraordinary intervention after qualifying.

“We’re at a point in the year where 59 points is a huge — huge — deficit to recover from, especially when Mercedes continue to be the leaders in speed,” Hamilton said, per The Race. “We do have to work as a team.”

He then hinted, via some incomplete sentences, at what he really was getting at.

“Have we been… if and when that would ever change… we’ll find out, but all I can do is just try to arrive and do the best job I can.“

He was then asked if he wanted to say that Ferrari should prioritise closing his 59-point title deficit over Leclerc’s 87-point gap.

“There’s light at the end of the tunnel, but it’s getting dimmer the further we get through,” he said.

“Even though the team’s doing an amazing job in bringing upgrades and pushing us forward — I’m so proud of everyone working; I say it all the time, but it’s because I really am.

“I couldn’t do what I do without seeing the great work of everybody, and I feel like I always want to make sure that I acknowledge them and recognise them for that, because I want them to continue to push and I want them to stay hungry and keep that passion and fire.

“But also at the track, we need to come correct and act accordingly to make sure we get the result we need.”

The context for Hamilton essentially requesting priority over Leclerc is clear. He felt he lost a shot at victory in the Netherlands to dithering on the pit wall and instead walked away with a bigger title gap.

This weekend he’s seen several teams prioritise one driver — albeit all in different circumstances — and reap the rewards.

But this generation of Ferrari doesn’t appear disposed to that sort of thinking. How it responds to the call will be fascinating.

PIASTRI’S POSITIVE PERFORMANCE DESPITE PENALTY

McLaren ended up much closer to the pole battle than expected. Whereas it barely lapped within half a second of top spot all weekend, Piastri — who had looked half a step behind teammate Lando Norris all weekend — was just 0.037s adrift of Russell after their first laps.

He didn’t complete his second lap after locking up into the first chicane, though he surely wouldn’t have improved anyway as the first driver on the track, leaving him without a slipstream.

The Australian nonetheless qualified third, only 0.180s off pole, for his equal season best qualifying performance of the season.

But Piastri won’t start there after he serves a three-place penalty for impeding Liam Lawson in Q2.

The offence was clear, but as the stewards found, the circumstances were unfortunate.

McLaren struggled to position its cars on track all session, and on this occasion it sent Piastri out of pit lane in front of three drivers on push laps.

He was able to let two of them by before reaching the chicane at slow speed, at which point he had no choice but to enter and block Lawson.

But it took nothing away from Piastri’s performance — much needed amid his ongoing struggles to get the most from his car.

“Good to have a decent result at least,” he said before the penalty. “It’s been a little while, so I’ll take it.”

It’s the first time since the Japanese Grand Prix way back in March that he’s qualified inside the top three. It also broke a six-race losing qualifying streak to Norris, closing the head-to-head count to 5-8 in the Englishman’s favour.

Piastri’s race from sixth — and Norris’s from eighth — will likely be tough, however, with Mercedes and Ferrari likely to have the race pace to escape up the road, and Verstappen is one of the best defenders in the sport.

But McLaren was closer to pole than expected at what on paper should be one of its worst tracks, which will give it hope for the rest of the season.