A very tight battle for pole position saw Kimi Raikkonen take pole position at Ferrari’s home race in Monza. The Finn narrowly beat his team mate Sebastian Vettel, therefore securing a Ferrari front row lock out for the Italian Grand Prix. Hamilton and Bottas will start from the second row.
A sunny qualifying session saw Sergio Perez get eliminated in the first part of qualifying already, as Racing Point Force India had miscalculated the target time to get into Q2. They therefore opted not to send Perez out again, regrettably for them seeing their driver get eliminated by a thousandth of a second. Along with him were both Sauber cars, Hartley and Vandoorne in last position.
Q2 was a reasonably straight forward affair initially, with Vettel taking charge of the timing board halfway through the section. Hamilton ended up second fastest, followed by Raikkonen, Verstappen and Bottas.
The positions behind were very insecure at that moment, so two minutes and thirty seconds from the end of Q2, a big pack of cars left the pitlane to fill the empty track. This caused a bit of worry among drivers in the train, but eventually they all created a gap ahead of them, enough to make a clean lap.
The only two men who didn’t do so were Alonso and Magnussen, with Alonso slipstreaming behind the Haas and getting past him through Turn 1, effectively ruining both their quick laps, and causing their elimination, thanks also to Gasly who improved to 10th. Lance Stroll similarly surprised to go 8th fastest. The incident saw Gunther Steiner go to Zak Brown in the pitlane to ask for an explanation, while the stewards announced an investigation to happen after the qualifying session.
Nico Hulkenberg opted to abort his final lap and set no time in Q2 while Daniel Ricciardo didn’t leave the pits and ended up 15th.
Q3 saw tension building up as Hamilton managed to record a new lap record, topping Raikkonen and Vettel in the first string of laps. Bottas ended up in fourth, ahead of Verstappen, Sainz, Ocon and Gasly. Lance Stroll meanwhile did not run.
In the second and final run, Hamilton led the way, ahead of Vettel and Raikkonen. With the gaps tiny, tension was high, with Hamilton first improved, then saw Vettel improve even more, with Raikkonen eventually taking pole position, securing a Ferrari front row for the 2018 Italian Grand Prix.
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