Monaco F1 Grand Prix qualifying results: Oscar Piastri banking on ‘chaos theory’ after finishing third fastest

Australia’s championship leader will start from the second row and have to rely on drama ahead of him if he is to win at the inconic but infamously uneventful marquee circuit.

McLaren's Australian driver Oscar Piastri has qualified third for the Monaco Grand Prix.

Australia’s Oscar Piastri has his work cut out to win the Monaco Grand Prix after finishing third in qualifying. With an electrifying crowd of 100,000 lining the hills and valleys of the famous street circuit on a sun-kissed Saturday afternoon, following a description of Formula One as “Shakespeare on wheels” by a billion-dollar sponsor, Piastri has fallen short of pole position in a session that majorly complicates his quest to win the most prestigious motorsport race in the world.

Securing pole on Saturday traditionally leads to the chequered flag on Sunday at Monaco because the near-century old layout is too narrow for overtaking. And yet this year may be wildly different, according to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who predicts “chaos” because of rule changes designed to spice things up.

Qualifying was won by Piastri’s McLaren teammate Lando Norris, who celebrated in his garage like he’d won the race itself. For all intents and purposes, he might have. Still, you never know what can happen on race day, with crashes always possible, and red flags and safety cars, and unpredictable weather, and the new two-stop rule throwing a spanner in the works. The most prestigious race in F1 is Norris’s for the taking but Leclerc, qualifying second, says: “I think it’s going to be chaos tomorrow.”

Piastri was 175/1000s of a second in arrears, and it takes longer to blink an eye, of course, so the difference is minuscule, but milliseconds are everything in F1. Norris trails Piastri by only 13 points in the drivers’ championship, with 25 points going to the winner at Monaco, and the Melburnian admits it will be a challenge to join Jack Brabham, Mark Webber and Daniel Ricciardo in the select group of Australians to win the 96-year-old event.

Piastri is looking to become just the fourth Australian to win at Monaco.

“It was intense,” Piastri said of qualifying. “I left a bit out there and to win it, to be honest, is going to be tough. It’s been a pretty messy weekend so far. To come out in third is a decent result but I think I’ve hit more walls this weekend than I have in my whole career. It’s been untidy and I’ve just been struggling to get into the groove a bit. It’s been a challenging time but it’s still going to be an exciting race tomorrow with the two stops, so we’ll see what happens.”

Piastri was dominating F1 after three consecutive wins but he’s hit a speed bump. He faded to third behind Norris at the Emilia-Romagna GP and now he’s fallen behind by his stablemate once more. Piastri or Norris are the likely world champions and right when Piastri was skipping away, Norris has found enough zip and momentum to start pegging the deficit. They may be neck-and-neck, tyre-to-tyre throughout the 24-race season, and so every placing at every track will be crucial in the final analysis.

Leclerc’s chaos theory stems from all drivers being ordered to do two pit stops, and use three sets of tyres, in an effort to inject pandemonium into a race that has become rather a procession. Asked if he agrees with Leclerc, Piastri says: “It’s not going to be straightforward. I don’t think anyone really knows what to expect.”

The Monaco GP starts at 11pm Sunday (AEST). F1’s popularity is soaring worldwide off the back of the Netflix series ‘Drive To Survive,” the upcoming Brad Pitt movie called “F1,” an intriguing mix of personalities on the grid and gripping battles for the world championship. The most recent Nielsen Sports study estimates the global fanbase to be 750 million. TAG Heuer spokeswoman Kristine Drullion has called the tour “Shakespeare on wheels” while explaining her company’s $1.5 billion, 10-year sponsorship of the Monaco GP. “You’ve got rivalry, and you’ve got tragic downfalls, and all of a sudden, you’ve got unprecedented or unheard-of heroes,” she says. “It echoes something very ancient and very rich, which is a narrative archetype. We’re a culture that loves entertainment and I think that’s why we get so hooked.”