Kimi Antonelli secured his fourth pole position of the 2026 F1 season with a great lap in qualifying for the Monaco GP, and secured what surely is Mercedes’ best chance of winning around the principality since the 2019 edition, as the young Italian managed to just pip four-time world champion Max Verstappen by 43 thousandths of a second in his final run, to grab an exhilarating pole around the streets of Monte Carlo.
Antonelli was “shaking” after intense pole lap in 2026 F1 Monaco GP
Although he has enjoyed plenty of success in the recent run of F1 grands prix in 2026, Antonelli admitted he was “shaking” after securing pole in the iconic streets of the principality, and explained how the intense nature of the tight and twisty Monaco GP circuit makes it all the more special when it all goes right:
“Big one, still kind of shaking, to be fair,” he said when asked just how much of a rush that final lap in Q3 was. “It’s just super intense. You have no margin of mistake, and when it’s about polishing those last two, three tenths, it’s never easy.
“And especially when Max [Verstappen] is so close and also the Ferrari – Lewis [Hamilton] has been so strong the whole weekend. [It’s] definitely not easy, but obviously very happy to come away with pole today.”
Antonelli “very happy” with Mercedes’ progress in sector which was “a struggle” on Friday at the 2026 F1 Monaco GP
After a well-known struggle in sector two of the tight Monaco F1 GP circuit on Friday of the 2026 edition, Antonelli was happy to report that the team had found solutions in time for Saturday’s FP3 session, and revealed that the only minor setback was at the start of Q1, when track conditions weren’t optimal following an earlier Formula 2 sprint race:
“[At] the start of the session, the qualy was a little bit more difficult than we expected. The track felt a little bit weird, a little bit off, so the car felt a little bit more oversteery than FP3, for example,” he explained. “But then the grip came back, and the car just started to come more together.
“I was happy mainly in the lap with the sector two, where we struggled a little bit more during the weekend, especially in [turns] five, six, seven and eight.
“To be fair, I have to be honest, the team did an incredible, big turnaround compared to yesterday in terms of setup.
“Yesterday, I’m not going to lie, we were struggling. And so the team did a great job with overnight correlation, to do big changes on setup and the car just felt much more alive this morning.
“It was also forgiving much more [over] cutting curbs, bumps. So the team did a great job with the setup and that was what make us gain so much in terms of performance between yesterday and today and allowed us to fight for pole.“
Antonelli unusual ‘praise’ for a rival team
Although Mercedes F1 themselves were struggling on Friday of the 2026 Monaco GP, they were able to turn things around on Saturday morning. But in the same session, Max Verstappen struggled to put together a competitive time in, ending up fifth fastest and over nine tenths back from Antonelli’s benchmark in FP3.
Which is why the young Italian unusually praised the “incredible job” from a rival team to claw back such an immense deficit and be right in the battle for perhaps the most important pole position of the F1 season:
“I mean, to be fair, I did not expect Max and Red Bull to be there [in the fight for pole],” he said. “Because in FP3 they had a struggle, but an incredible job by them to recover and to be there because it was such a tight fight, and I am very happy to come away with pole, and now looking forward to tomorrow.“
Antonelli admits getting a good start will be key for his chances of winning
Getting the Mercedes off the line hasn’t proved to be the easiest of jobs for Kimi Antonelli so far in F1 2026, and the championship leader is well aware that he can’t afford to lose out in the critical run into Sainte Devote if he’s to win at the Monaco GP and extend his championship lead over his struggling team-mate George Russell:
“I mean, the start in Montreal, for the first time, I didn’t lose [many places], [but] I still lost a place on Sunday.
“But for the first time, I didn’t lose like six or seven places. So it was a step forward. It’s a pretty short run into Monaco into turn one. So yeah, just need to get a clean start. Don’t try to do the magic start. And then we see from there.
“I know who are [the drivers] behind, and I know they’re very good, so for sure they’re gonna push me and they’re gonna try to put pressure, but, yeah, first of all we’ll try to get a good start.
“Canada [start] was a step forward, but tomorrow, of course, different conditions and then we’ll see.
“We still have, you know, you still need to have a good pace in hand because tyre [degradation] might be bigger than what we anticipate [because] we didn’t really try any long run.
“We did only a few laps, so we don’t really have as much data, but for sure we know that it’s very difficult to overtake, but you still need to have the pace because in case of something happening, you need to push.”
