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Charles Leclerc claimed a third pole position for his home Formula 1 race - the Monaco Grand Prix - while Max Verstappen will only start sixth.
The narrative from practice of Leclerc looking untouchable and Red Bull looking shaky appeared less certain in the early parts of qualifying, which had a degree of lottery to them amid heavy traffic and with constant track evolution.
But having not topped either Q1 or Q2, Leclerc’s Ferrari was back to its practice form in Q3 with an early 1m10.418s.
That was just 0.026 seconds ahead of Oscar Piastri’s McLaren at that point, but while Piastri could only find another 0.02s on his final effort, Leclerc improved to a 1m10.270s to give himself a more comfortable margin.
By contrast Verstappen was only third after the first runs and then reported hitting the wall right at the start of his final bid.
He backed off and could only watch other cars push him down to the outside of row three.
The second Ferrari of Carlos Sainz, second McLaren of Lando Norris and George Russell’s Mercedes slotted into third through fifth positions.
Red Bull’s qualifying session had been going badly already, with Sergio Perez’s three-tenths-of-a-second deficit to Verstappen in Q1 translating to a miserable 18th place for the 2022 Monaco winner.
Perez was one of two significant Q1 exits, with Fernando Alonso’s poor run of recent form continuing with 16th in qualifying, an outcome he put partly down to traffic.
Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes and top RB runner Yuki Tsunoda will share row four, while Williams’s Alex Albon and Alpine’s Pierre Gasly starred by reaching Q3 and claiming row five.
Gasly’s progression came at team-mate Esteban Ocon’s expense, though Ocon will still start 11th after by far Alpine’s best day of 2024 so far.
It was a miserable one for Sauber, though. As just 0.568s covered first to 18th in Q1, practice-three crasher Valtteri Bottas was a second off the pace in 19th and his team-mate Zhou Guanyu was another half-second slower still in last.
