Kimi Raikkonen secured his first pole position for nine years on Saturday when he outpaced his Ferrari team-mate Sebastian Vettel in a dramatic qualifying session for Sunday’s Monaco Grand Prix.
The 37-year-old Finn, who had not taken pole position for 128 races stretching back to 2008, dominated the afternoon’s action to clock a fastest lap of one minute and 12.178 seconds.
That left him 0.043 seconds ahead of the world championship leader and three-time champion Vettel who in turn was just two-thousandths of a second faster than third-placed Valtteri Bottas of Mercedes.
The Finn’s Mercedes team-mate, Briton Lewis Hamilton, failed to make progress from Q2 and missed the cut for the top-10 shoot-out. He qualified 14th after a miserable afternoon.
Dutch teenager Max Verstappen took fourth place ahead of his Red Bull team-mate, Australian Daniel Ricciardo, Spaniard Carlos Sainz of Toro Rosso, Mexican Sergio Perez of Force India and Frenhcman Romain Grosjean of Haas.
Briton Jenson Button, back from retirement to replace two-time champion Spaniard Fernando Alonso, who is racing in the Indianapolis 500, was ninth for McLaren Honda ahead of his team-mate Stoffel Vandoorne. However, Button has a 15-place grid penalty for engine replacements and that is expected to lift Hamilton up to 13th.
