How Antonelli's "magic lap" stole pole from Verstappen in Monaco

Recently Max Verstappen might have been openly questioning his motivation to continue with a type of Formula 1 car he hates, but he brought his A-game to Monaco, peaking at precisely the right moment to deliver a pole-worthy lap. Until championship leader Kimi Antonelli snatched it away by the wafer-thin margin of 0.048s.

The gap had been 0.942s just a few hours earlier, in FP3, but Red Bull performed one of those magic tricks and found a sweeter spot ahead of qualifying, making the RB21 less unsympathetic over bumps than before.

“Quite a bit,” was Verstappen’s response when asked if the car’s pace took him by surprise. “After this morning… We were like nine tenths off. I was confident that we would make some improvements heading into qualifying, but not to fight for pole, honestly.

“When I jumped into the car, I was like, ‘OK, let’s try and recover a bit. Maybe top five, that’s the target.’ But I’d say from quite early on in qualifying, the car felt a bit better.

“We still have our little problems and especially in the middle sector, that’s where we lose the most, where you have a few kerbs that you have to take and there are a few bumps in the track. It’s just a little bit more complicated at the moment for our car.

“But I still think that overall, we had a very good qualifying. We were up there; we were fighting for pole. So even if you would have told me after yesterday, where we looked quite OK, to be starting on the front row, I would have immediately taken it. For us it’s been a very good turnaround. Yesterday I was quite happy. This morning, really not happy, and now I’m fairly happy again.”

That assessment of losing the most in the middle sector does stand up to analysis, though it was actually the exit from the final corner where Antonelli turned around what would have been a P2 lap for him – in a sector where Verstappen was, overall, faster.

Little wonder Antonelli’s race engineer, Peter Bonnington, told Sky TV afterwards that, “I didn't think it was on. Just looking at the time delta, I thought, 'It's going to be close, but it's not going to happen.'”

Advantage Max in sector one

The tale of the tape shows Verstappen (dark blue trace in our graphic) went through the first sector fastest of all, in 18.827s compared with Antonelli’s 18.934s. Just a tenth in it, and that will rankle with Charles Leclerc, who was just five hundredths off Antonelli (the ‘Petronas blue’ trace in our graphic) in this first sector on his final flying lap… before he smote the barrier at Tabac towards the end of the second sector.

Max attacked the apex of Ste Devote more aggressively, carrying a little more entry speed than Antonelli, and hugging the inside kerb more tightly, giving him a slightly neater angle out of the corner and a fractionally higher speed for the first 10 metres or so up the hill towards Massenet. That accounts for a tenth or so, though the gap would ebb and flow again as the Merc’s superior grunt told up the hill, where Antonelli was perhaps a fraction ahead.

But Verstappen then carried more speed into Casino Square, where the track plunges downwards after the sharp right-hander. He took a tighter line through Massenet, then opened the steering to drive straight to the apex of Turn 4 where he speared the apex more precisely, leaving conspicuously less margin for error.

It was super-tight with the barrier at the exit but Max had faith in the RB21’s front end to commit to this blind-entry corner early. That gave him a couple of car lengths over the Mercedes.

Antonelli claws it back in second sector

A tighter line through the hairpin enabled Antonelli to snaffle a few thousandths back in the early phases of sector two. But, again, the grunt of the Mercedes helped shave more time off Verstappen’s margin once they had reached Portier and accelerated through the tunnel.

It’s at the chicane where the balance shifted. There, the Red Bull was visibly discombobulated over the bumps on the initial entry after the downhill braking phase, then again between the first and second apices.

Antonelli had the confidence to lift off a fraction later than Verstappen and carry more speed towards the first apex; both of them were millimetre-precise in almost brushing the front-left wheel against the rounded edge of the Armco barrier here, it’s just that Antonelli was travelling faster.

Watch qualifying again, see Gabriel Bortoleto – no slouch – get it completely wrong there, and marvel at the symphony of precision demonstrated by the occupants of the front row.

All weekend, Antonelli has been able to hug the inner contour of the chicane’s kerbing, even after riding the taller ‘sausage’ element at the second apex. Verstappen managed it too, despite the RB21’s bouncier ride, but Antonelli got the better drive out and had a couple of car lengths’ margin on the drive towards Tabac.

There, Antonelli was later off the throttle once more, carrying a fraction more speed. 33.989s versus 34.184s for sector two. Though Hamilton was fastest of all here with a 33.957s – another thread in Ferrari’s tapestry of frustration.

Sector three: Verstappen strikes back

In the final sector Verstappen was faster overall with a 19.083s, but not by enough, and the margin swung right at the end, with Antonelli’s 19.128s fast enough to preserve the margin he had built up in sector two.

It didn’t look that way at the beginning. Antonelli was first into the swimming pool section, but Verstappen carried more speed through the second apex – around 7km/h.

This was enough to erode the Mercedes’ margin as they passed by the pool itself and approach the second right-left flick. By that point they were roughly even but this time it was Verstappen who carried more speed through this section which demands mighty precision and self-confidence; time and again this weekend, cars have threatened to swap ends here and Verstappen’s own team-mate ended up nose-first into the exit barrier on Friday.

On the approach to Rascasse they were roughly even once more but Verstappen got off the throttle later through the left-curving approach to the corner itself, a sharp right-hander. That earned him some time – enough to have the Mercedes pitwall twitching – but it’s what Antonelli did next which proved decisive.

Releasing the brake fractionally later and picking up the throttle earlier than Verstappen, Antonelli got a better run past the apex of the tighter right-hander and held on to that through Antony Noghes, the final corner, where the Mercedes’ power tilted the balance in his favour on the run to the line by 0.048s.

“It was one of those laps that we call the magic lap,” said Antonelli afterwards. “I didn’t know how much I was improving. I just saw before the time of the delta and then I saw it on the finish line. I didn’t know the time that Max did when I was doing the lap.

“It felt a good lap, it felt like things just came together, but I didn’t know where I was. I just felt especially that sector two felt great, but then of course I got the confirmation on the radio.

“It’s so intense here that what you just think about is trying to drive as fast as you can without obviously doing mistakes, and then you see once you cross the finish line where you end up.”

Photo by: Sam Bloxham / LAT Images via Getty Images