Pierre Gasly delivered one of the biggest sensations of the Formula 1 season on Saturday at Monza, scoring a shock pole position at the track where he claimed his only Formula 1 victory back in 2020.
The Frenchman beat his closest challenger and pre-session favourite George Russell by just 0.060s in the dying minutes of qualifying - earning his first-ever pole position in his nine-year F1 career.
The pair revealed afterwards that it wasn't the first defeat Gasly had inflicted on Russell on Saturday - as they had also just finished an online chess game minutes before the start of qualifying.
"Massive congrats to Pierre because that’s an incredible performance," Russell said at the post-qualifying press conference. "We were actually finishing a game of chess about 15 minutes before qualifying and he beat me there, and I thought, 'Well, I think I’ll beat you in qualifying,' and here we are, he’s ahead of me again.
"So, yeah, huge congrats to him. Of course, I was disappointed not to get the pole position."
Gasly said he only found out on Friday that Russell was also a chess player, with the pair exchanging their accounts on the biggest online chess platform and already playing a couple of games.
"Well, I mean, since the [drivers'] briefing last night, I figured out that he’s obsessed with chess," Gasly said. "I am obsessed with chess. We have a few in the paddock, a few drivers, to be obsessed with it. So, we’ve just exchanged our IDs on Chess.com and we’ve had a little game going on, one yesterday, another one that carried on to today.
"And I must say, before the quali, I felt pretty confident because I was picking piece after piece. And, yeah, again, for the fun story, Ben [Thorne, performance coach] told me, 'Well, you’re getting George here, but he’s going to get you in a few minutes.' I was like, 'Yeah, fuck off.'
"Turned out that, yeah, it worked out well. So, yeah, it’s been fun. I think we are very competitive and, whether it’s on the track or off the track, we do need to find our little battles everywhere we can."
Chess has become a hobby for several F1 drivers, with Ferrari duo Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc known to regularly play against each other. Carlos Sainz is also known to be a keen player.
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