Pierre Gasly claims surprise pole at Monza after pre-qualifying chess win over George Russell

A quarter of an hour before the qualifying session which delivered the biggest surprise pole position in Formula 1 for years, Alpine's Pierre Gasly was playing online chess with Mercedes driver George Russell and winning.

"I must say before the quali, I felt pretty confident," the Frenchman said, "because I was picking piece by piece after piece."

Gasly's performance coach Ben Thorne was watching.

"For a fun story," Gasly said, "Ben told me, 'OK, well, you're getting George here, but he's going to get you in a few minutes.'"

Gasly said he reacted with a swear word but he was smiling as he recalled the moment.

"Turned out that it worked out well. So yeah, it's been fun," he added.

Russell, who lines up second to Gasly, was laughing about it. "He beat me there," the Briton said, "and I thought, 'Well, I think I'll beat you in qualifying,' and here we are, he's ahead of me again."

No-one - especially not Gasly nor his Alpine team - would have predicted the 30-year-old would end up on pole in Monza on Saturday, even though his only win in F1 came at this exact track six years ago.

That victory, in the middle of F1's bizarre, spectator-less pandemic season, owed a lot to luck - a remarkable race that ended up with Gasly, then driving for Red Bull's Toro Rosso team, taking a restart from third place and Lance Stroll going off ahead of him on the first lap to gift him the lead once Lewis Hamilton had served a penalty.

This pole was not like that. It was absolutely earned on merit.

The Alpine has strong straight-line speed with a low-downforce-leaning aerodynamic design. The car - which has a Mercedes engine, the best in the field - has looked quick all weekend. It had an upgrade that lifted its performance at the last race in the Netherlands. And Gasly and his team absolutely nailed qualifying, while all the usual leading contenders had scrappy sessions one way or another.

"Monza is a bit of unique track as we know," Gasly said. "It definitely exceeded all our expectations.

"Since this morning, the pace has been better. We managed to make a good step from P3 to quali and I think slightly bigger than the other guys around us.

"Straight from Q1, we were a bit surprised to see us up there. Our target was Q3. But then I was P1 in Q1, then P4 in Q2. I didn't want to get too excited but then first run in Q3, I was third again.

"And then I felt, 'OK, well, I really have a shot at it.' It's probably the first time I really get a true chance and tried to leave everything I had out there.

"It was quite hectic through Ascari and Parabolica. I don't think there was definitely much (left) in there. And crossing the line, I knew it will be one of these laps that will be rewarded. But to the point to get to the pole position, I didn't expect that."

Gasly is well liked within the paddock, and has many friends among the drivers, but he has long been one of F1's forgotten heroes, regardless of that win six years ago.

A Red Bull protege, his time in the works team in 2019 did not work out. Like so many since, he was crushed by Max Verstappen, and demoted back to the second team after half a season.

After sticking with Red Bull for three more years, he was given an opportunity with Alpine, and he hoped a move to a factory team would be his making.

But Alpine have stumbled since, until finally showing signs of a revival this season, following Renault's decision to abandon its F1 engine project and switch to Mercedes customer engines.

The team had been making headlines already this weekend.

On Friday, Gasly lost the podium at Monaco to which he had been promoted after Alpine won an appeal against two penalties for pit-lane speeding, when the FIA court of appeal reinstated the punishment.

A few hours later, de facto team boss Flavio Briatore caused an eruption in a news conference when he alleged one of the four judges in the case had "links" with McLaren.

It was a claim that appeared to lack any substance, based as it was on a charity event in California in 2018 at which the judge in question had been present and to which a local McLaren garage had apparently donated "two or three" cars.

And Briatore provided no evidence to back up the insinuation he was making.

The claim was described as "insulting" in that news conference by McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, and afterwards it became clear that McLaren were furious about what Briatore had said on apparently the most flimsy of bases.

Then, on Saturday, a rare statement from the FIA court of appeal refuted the allegation and any "questions (about) the independence and impartiality of the judges".

The court of appeal verdict made a lot of sense. It left many questions about the controversy of the pit-lane penalties in Monaco, but at least it ensured all drivers who had been given them had been treated equitably - notwithstanding the fact that it seems none of them should have received the penalties.

Regardless of the questionable nature of Briatore's comments, Alpine were unhappy about losing their Monaco podium, feeling that they had been given two penalties unjustly when their evidence showed Gasly had never been over the pit-lane speeding limit.

Managing director Steve Nielsen told Sky Sports: "Two or three days ago, we were on the floor. It is really from being down to being on top of the world in just two days and it is amazing. We need to soak it up and make the best of it.

"Pierre is a class act. If you give him the machine, he will deliver. We failed to do that a few times last year.

"We haven't always given him the most competitive machinery this year, but when we have, he has delivered, particularly earlier in the season, So to see the team bounce back, to see him deliver on the track he knows well, he lives locally, he lives in Milan. It was wonderful."

In qualifying, Gasly was positioned second last in the train of cars on the final qualifying run, the absolute optimum place in terms of a slipstream.

Others, meanwhile, were compromised in one way or another, including the favourite for pole, Russell, when Verstappen disrupted Mercedes' attempts to have team-mate Kimi Antonelli tow the Briton by getting between the two silver cars at the end of their out laps.

"We had a bit of a mess with Verstappen entering the lap," Russell said. "He wanted to go for the tow, Kimi was there as well, and I did my lap a second and a half behind Max, which wasn't ideal.

"It takes nothing away from what Pierre achieved because, as he said, they were flying all day, quickest in Q1 and right up there from the beginning. So I'm happy for Pierre and, of course, disappointed we weren't on pole ourselves. However, great place to start for tomorrow."

Russell acknowledged after qualifying what is at stake for him on Sunday. He goes into the race 59 championship points behind leader Antonelli, who has pretty much had his measure all season. But he has a golden opportunity to make up ground on the Italian, who is due to start 20th because of a grid penalty for exceeding his engine allowance.

Russell said: "The win is going to be very important tomorrow but I'm more pleased about the performance. Since the summer break, every lap I have been in the top three positions, while I had that tough run of form before the break when every lap wasn't in the top five."

Antonelli is expected easily to get back into the top six or so, but that would still allow Russell to make a substantial dent in his advantage.

Given Russell has his own grid penalty looming within a couple of races for the same reason, it is imperative for his title hopes that he does so.

On Friday, Gasly did not appear to have the race speed to challenge the top teams, so even though overtaking is harder at Monza than might be expected given its long straights, he knows it will be tough to win the race.

"Obviously not to the pace of these guys around us, but we seem to have picked up more pace from yesterday to today," Gasly said. "So we'll obviously give our best shot and see what we can get out of it."

Aside from Gasly, Russell's main opposition is likely to come from Ferrari, who for the third race in a row seemed to fumble a better qualifying result for operational reasons. It was a bad time to do it again, as they debuted their upgraded engine at their home race.

After both cars came perilously close to being knocked out in the second part of qualifying, Charles Leclerc left the pits in the final session while Lewis Hamilton had no wheels on his car, so the seven-time champion was far from best placed for his run in terms of the slipstream.

Leclerc and Hamilton will start third and fourth after McLaren's Oscar Piastri was given a three-place grid penalty for impeding Red Bull's Liam Lawson.

Hamilton - like Russell, 59 points behind Antonelli - seemed to imply after qualifying that he felt the team should prioritise his hopes over Leclerc's, even if he could not quite bring himself to say it outright.

"(Piastri's penalty) puts us in (with a) fighting chance, hopefully, with George," Hamilton said. "That's one Mercedes up front, so hopefully that gives us a chance to work as a team to try and topple them.

"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.

"So yeah, we do have to work as a team. 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."