The party at Aston Martin on Saturday lasted only a few seconds. When Fernando Alonso crossed the finish line, all his mechanics jumped for joy – a miracle, the pole position was practically a given. But the hullabaloo ended suddenly. When Max Verstappen crossed the finish line, the Spaniard’s garage was plunged into silence, hands on his head, how could it be?

Alonso came close, very close, closer than ever this year to starting a race from pole position. In Monaco, the best place to do so, he came within eight hundredths of beating Verstappen and will start second, equally in with a chance of victory. “I touched the wall twice!” shouted the Dutchman at the end of qualifying. He had nerves. Alonso had pushed him into the abyss. In fact, for a few moments, getting out of it seemed impossible. Before his final attempt, after risking everything at every corner, Verstappen was behind the Spaniard and could only beat him at the final corner..

“It has been well. Pole position means a lot here in Monaco, but starting from the front row of the grid is also very important for us.. I will try to win”, Alonso commented at the end of the session, before putting pressure on Verstappen again, the latter with a microphone in hand: “There is very little travel on this straight and it is difficult to gain a position, but Max is somewhat irregular at the starts and maybe tomorrow I'll do it wrong”.

There is no place as traditional in Formula 1 as Monaco and if tradition is followed, Alonso can get his first victory in a decade this Sunday. Due to the extreme narrowness and the extreme slowness of the circuit, overtaking here is a chimera and its position on the front row is a real advantage. A test? Of the last 18 winners, 15 started from the front row.

The KO of Pérez and Stroll

From the first moment the classification was illuminated for Alonso to dance under the spotlight. something was intuited. At the start of Q1, before the nerves even seized, 'Checo' Pérez crashed into the wall in front of the Santa Devota church and Alonso's chances of accessing the front row multiplied. The Mexican, after all, had held two pole positions this season -Arabia and Miami- and only once, in Australia, when he made a mistake, did he start behind the Spaniard. This Sunday he will start twentieth, one less rival.

Another will be Alonso’s own teammate, Lance Stroll, who also failed on Saturday. After a brilliant Q1, in Q2 he was eliminated because of a mistake. Without the need for an accident, a bad lap left him at risk and, in that situation, unlike Verstappen, he did not know how to resolve. He will start fourteenth.

The rest of the candidates were placed on the grid with a surprise in between. The two Alpine drivers tested their speed in qualifying and one of them, Esteban Ocon, placed fourth so, after Verstappen and Alonso, Charles Leclerc will start third and Carlos Sainz, fifth. Further back Lewis Hamilton will start sixth and George Russell eighth.