F1 2016: Ricciardo steals pole from Mercedes at Monaco

Red Bull Racing’s driver, Daniel Ricciardo has stolen pole position from Mercedes in Monaco. Nico Rosberg and his Mercedes team-mate, Lewis Hamilton will start the race from second and third respectively.

As Monaco has always been the place that has provided much drama, the first qualifying session delivered the mayhem right on point. The first session of qualifying was red flagged twice with the first due to an engine blowout on the Sauber of Felipe Nasr. Nasr was exiting the tunnel on his first lap, when a huge cloud of smoke from the exhaust cost him an engine and out of the first session of qualifying.

The second time the red flags were brought out, was thanks to the sensational 2016 Spanish Grand Prix winner, Max Verstappen. On his flying lap, Verstappen clipped the barriers near the swimming pool chicane at turn 15. The small impact broke the front right suspension on his Red Bull and crash into the barriers. Verstappen now set to start from the last row of the grid. the dutch driver also had in incident with the barriers near the Massenet corner in Free Practice 3 earlier in the morning which could have caused some un-noticable damage to the suspension component that failed.

In Q2, Rosberg almost met with the same fate as Verstappen, as he too clipped the same barrier trying to take the corner too fast and turning in a bit too early. Rosberg did claim contact on the radio, but didn’t suffer any damage to the car and hence continued on for the rest of the session.

The third and final session of qualifying started with Lewis Hamilton stalling the car right at the pit exit as the session went green. Because Hamilton hadn’t crossed the pit exit white line, his mechanics were able to push the car back into the garage for a system reset.

Meanwhile on track, Daniel Ricciardo set a blistering time of 1:13.622 on his first run. Following him was Sebastian Vettel in the Ferrari who only managed to second best his time with a difference of a second between the two. Kimi Raikkonen who will be awarded with a five place grid penalty couldn’t manage to out do his team mate and slotted in behind him. Rosberg then had a swing at beating Ricciardo’s time, but failed to do so. However, Rosberg did manage to go faster than Vettel’s Ferrari and take second place.

On their second run in Q3, Rosberg was on target to take pole position, but was over a tenth slower than the time set by Ricciardo. Lewis Hamilton who was able to get back out on track also had a go at Ricciardo but was two tenths slower than Rosberg and slotted into third place for the start of the race.

The Ferrari’s of Vettel and Raikkonen just didn’t have the pace near the end of the session and dived into the pits without a full run. Vettel qualified fourth while Raikkonen only qualified sixth behind Nico Hulkenberg in fifth. Raikkonen will drop back down five places after an unscheduled gearbox change.

2016 F1 Monaco GRAND PRIX QUALIFYING (28/05/2016)
Circuit de Monaco – 3.337KM, 19 TURNS

**Eliminated after Q1

*Eliminated after Q2