A majestic Carlos Sainz sent the tifosi into raptures at the Monza circuit, presenting Scuderia Ferrari with its 245th pole position, its 23rd at this track. Charles Leclerc will start right behind his team-mate tomorrow, in third place on the grid, when the race gets underway at 15 local time. A matter of thousandths.

Qualifying ran to the Alternative Tyre Allocation format, whereby drivers had to use only Hard tyres in Q1, Mediums in Q2 and Softs in Q3. Carlos and Charles got off on the right foot, getting through to Q2 using just a single set of Hard tyres, thus saving another set for the race and then comfortably made it to the final phase, always at the top of the time sheets, confirming the good form shown in free practice.

For Q3, they both had two sets of new Soft tyres at their disposal and on their first attempt they set the two fastest times of 1'20"532 and 1'20"564. With the second set, they went back out on track with two minutes remaining. Leclerc was first out, improving to 1'20"361.

The crowd was silenced momentarily as Max Verstappen went quickest in 1'20"307. But then the noise erupted once more a few seconds later when Carlos got his Ferrari past the chequered flag in 1'20"294, to secure his fourth Formula 1 career pole.

It's so special to get pole position here, in front of all the tifosi," said Sainz. "I had a very good feeling from the car already on Friday and today we confirmed our pace. Q3 was always on the limit and we all took big risks in the fight for this pole. When I finally crossed the line and I heard the tifosi screaming like crazy and jumping on the grandstands I knew we had it!"

"The direction we went in with the set-up of my car yesterday wasn't the right one, although at first I thought it was," said Leclerc. "So we had to adapt and make some changes for FP3, a session that still felt a bit inconsistent. But overall, our performance was good today and the gaps are really small between all of us. Let's see what we can do tomorrow."

Max Verstappen qualifed second, sandwiched by the two Ferraris.

George Russell took P4 on the grid with two strong Q3 laps, with the top nine covered by just 0.7s.

"You need to be dynamic in this new qualifying format as you jump down the tyre compounds, and I think we did a good job managing it today," said Russell.

Red Bull's Sergio Perez rounded out the top five.

"Checo recovered well from missing track time in FP3 and an engine change to line up P5 makes for an exciting race tomorrow," said Red Bull's Christian Horner.

Pos	Driver		Team		Time		Gap

1	Sainz		Ferrari		1:20.294	161.393 mph
2	Verstappen	Red Bull	1:20.307	0.013
3	Leclerc		Ferrari		1:20.361	0.067
4	Russell		Mercedes	1:20.671	0.377
5	Perez		Red Bull	1:20.688	0.394
6	Albon		Williams	1:20.760	0.466
7	Piastri		McLaren		1:20.785	0.491
8	Hamilton	Mercedes	1:20.820	0.526
9	Norris		McLaren		1:20.979	0.685
10	Alonso		Aston Martin	1:21.417	1.123
11	Tsunoda		AlphaTauri	1:21.594	
12	Lawson		AlphaTauri	1:21.758	
13	Hulkenberg	Haas		1:21.776	
14	Bottas		Alfa Romeo	1:21.940	
15	Sargeant	Williams	1:21.944	
16	Zhou		Alfa Romeo	1:22.390	
17	Gasly		Alpine		1:22.545	
18	Ocon		Alpine		1:22.548	
19	Magnussen	Haas		1:22.592	
20	Stroll		Aston Martin	1:22.86