Minute-by-minute updates for the 2023 Formula 1 Monaco Grand Prix.
The 2023 Monaco Grand Prix is the sixth round of the season, though was set to be the seventh had it not been for the Emilia Romagna GP's cancellation due to a weather emergency.
Max Verstappen starts on pole for the 78-lap grand prix around the streets of Monte Carlo, having edged Fernando Alonso in a thrilling Q3.
The sister Red Bull of Sergio Perez will start from the back of the grid after a Q1 crash, while Ferrari's Charles Leclerc goes from sixth after being hit with a grid penalty.
How Perez will play his recovery today will be interesting. Should he repeat Alonso's strategy of pitting early and running in clear air in the hope of cycling ahead of drivers who come in later? Or try to use the Red Bull's prodigious DRS power to surge through the pack on the track?
Weather fans among you will be relieved to know that there seems little chance of a repeat of last year's wild conditions. Air temperature is 25.9 °C, with track temperatures of 46.9 °C.
Alonso is another to overcome a lowly start. In 2010 he shunted in third practice at Massanet and wrote off his Ferrari, leaving him to start from the pitlane. But a tigerish drive after a lap one stop to change tyres, completing 77 tours on the same set of rubber, meant he took away sixth from a day that could have been much worse.
The Arrows that year was a bit of a dog. Not the sort of car you'd want for your Monaco GP debut. But after letting team-mate Jos Verstappen through, Bernoldi stubbornly defended from Coulthard until his pitstop on lap 43. The McLaren driver had been lapped by that time, but when he pitted 22 laps later it lifted him comfortably ahead and he went on to finish fifth as the first of the lapped cars.
The first that comes to my mind is David Coulthard. DC was a bit of a Monaco Master, taking McLaren's only win of 2002 on the streets after previously storming to the top of the podium in 2000. He'd taken pole for 2001 but a launch control glitch left him stranded on the dummy grid for the start and condemned him to a back of the grid start. Enter the chat, Enrique Bernoldi...
One driver decidedly absent from the sharp end of the grid today is Sergio Perez, whose Q1 shunt at Sainte Devote has condemned him to starting from the pitlane in a rebuilt chassis. The defending Monaco winner has a tough ask to salvage a result today, but it's not unheard of. A few drivers have defied the weighty odds to pick up points from lowly positions, as we'll go into...
Back onto the topic of the grid, Leclerc's penalty means Carlos Sainz joins Ocon on row two. It was a decent recovery yesterday for the Spaniard who shunted late in FP2. Next up are Lewis Hamilton, with the package of updates on his Mercedes, and the demoted Leclerc in sixth.
McLaren may struggle to win in Monaco for the first time since Lewis Hamilton in that dry-wet race in 2008, but it has an excellent chance at Indy with four cars in the top nine, including Tony Kanaan in what is set to be his final-ever IndyCar race. Kanaan never raced in F1, but his helmet did appear in 2006 when he and compatriot Rubens Barrichello swapped lids.
We mentioned the Indy 500 earlier in passing, and the famous IndyCar event celebrating its 107th edition later on today is part of the McLaren homage livery to its Triple Crown achievements in the race. The black part of the nose on Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri's machines references the 1995 Le Mans-winning F1 GTR, for anoraks among you.
Cars are arriving on the grid, which is one of the most packed on the F1 calendar made all the more so by the throng of celebrities. No sign yet of Jackie Stewart's officious Miami bodyguard friend causing havoc yet though.
I got an F3000 reference in early today, but it wasn't the one my colleague Jake Boxall-Legge was expecting. He points out that it's 20 years this year since Bjorn Wirdheim's domination of the 2003 race was undone by thinking the finish line was on the exit of the final corner, and his premature celebrations allowed Nicolas Kiesa to nab the final ever win for the Den Bla Avis team which folded not long afterwards. Sorry Bjorn!
Ocon hasn't been this high up on the grid since his Force India days, when he started third for the 2018 Belgian Grand Prix (unless you count his bizarre 'pole' for the 2021 Jeddah restart). How he plays the race will be fascinating, as Alpine could become only the third squad outside the 'big three' to score a podium under the new-for-2022 ground effects rules after McLaren (at Imola last year) and Aston with Alonso.
One driver who will be hoping the front row men make a mess of things (perhaps taking inspiration from David Saelens booting Sebastien Bourdais into the wall after getting a sluggish launch from pole in the 2000 F3000 race) is Esteban Ocon. He'll be starting third after a stunning qualifying for Alpine, boosted one spot by a three-place grid drop for Charles Leclerc impeding Lando Norris in the tunnel.
Verstappen admitted to clipping a few walls in his desperation to overhaul Alonso for pole, which is so crucial at a track where overtaking is a bit on the tricky side. He was two tenths in arrears after the first two sectors before blazing to pole with a remarkable final sector that they'll be talking about for years. Matt Kew digs into the GPS data to explain how the turnaround occurred: https://www.autosport.com/f1/news/what-the-gps-data-reveals-about-how-alonso-lost-monaco-gp-pole/10474532/
Alonso, remember, was so disillusioned with Formula 1 back in 2017 that he skipped Monaco to contest the Indianapolis 500 (more on that a bit later!) and Jenson Button came out of retirement to fence Pascal Wehrlein. But there can be no questioning Alonso's motivation this term with a truly competitive Aston Martin package as he rolled back the years for a first front-row start in the Principality since 2007.
First off, let's recap the grid. Max Verstappen snaring pole isn't an entirely unexpected eventuality in 2023 given the dominance of his Red Bull package, but yesterday's run to the top spot was utterly captivating. He nabbed the honour at the death from Fernando Alonso, who was denied his first pole since Hockenheim 2012 by just 0.084s.
Good afternoon everybody, and welcome to Autosport's live coverage of the Monaco Grand Prix. We're just under an hour away from the start, so get settled in and ready for round six of the 2023 world championship where, we hope, several questions posed by yesterday's qualifying will hopefully be answered.
