Lewis Hamilton has broken the all-time record for the number of pole positions, claiming his 69th pole position in one of the longest qualifying sessions in history at a wet Monza. Q1 did start on time at the scheduled 14:00 CEST, however, Romain Grosjean crashed inside the first four minutes of the session. This caused a red flag, however, the session restart got delayed for over two hours as the track had a lot of standing water on the start/finish straight. The session eventually resumed at 16:40 (CEST), and eventually the drivers to drop out of Q1 were: Kevin Magnussen, Jolyon Palmer, Marcus Ericsson, Pascal Wehrlein and Romain Grosjean. The whole of qualifying was wet, though it was rather changeable at times between wets and intermediates. The drivers to drop out of Q2 were: Sergio Perez, Nico Hulkenberg, Fernando Alonso, Daniil Kvyat and Carlos Sainz. Then Q3 came. It was a tense session and rain was rather heavy, it did require wet tyres to be used. In fact, initially, both Mercedes drivers went out on Intermediates, only to realise that it was too wet, and changed their tyres. The Red Bull drivers were the quickest out of the blocks before Hamilton set the fastest time in the first part of Q3. There was enough time to change onto a new set of wet tyres. At first, Max Verstappen went fastest ahead of Daniel Ricciardo, with Hamilton being pushed down to fourth having not set a time just yet, and he was behind Canadian driver Lance Stroll. However, Hamilton on his final run, set a dynamite lap of 1:35.554, a whole 1.2s ahead of Verstappen. The Ferraris were stuck in seventh and eighth, with Kimi Raikkonen ahead of Sebastian Vettel, but these will start fifth and sixth with the Red Bulls having to serve penalties and drop down to the back of the grid as a result of engine changes. Lance Stroll will start on the front row, becoming the youngest ever driver in Formula 1 history to start on the front row, whilst Esteban Ocon will start in third place.
Starting grid:
Lewis Hamilton - Mercedes
Lance Stroll - Williams-Mercedes
Esteban Ocon - Force India-Mercedes
Valtteri Bottas - Mercedes
Kimi Raikkonen - Ferrari
Sebastian Vettel - Ferrari
Felipe Massa - Williams-Mercedes
Stoffel Vandoorne - McLaren-Honda
Sergio Perez - Force India-Mercedes
Daniil Kvyat - Toro Rosso
Kevin Magnussen - Haas-Ferrari
Marcus Ericsson - Sauber-Ferrari
Pascal Wehrlein - Sauber-Ferrari
Max Verstappen - Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer
Nico Hulkenberg - Renault
Carlos Sainz - Toro Rosso
Daniel Ricciardo - Red Bull Racing-TAG Heuer
Jolyon Palmer - Renault
Fernando Alonso - McLaren-Honda
Romain Grosjean - Haas-Ferrari