Monaco Qualifying: Mega Ricciardo demolishes lap record

Ricciardo's breathtaking lap of 1:10.810 was the fastest ever at the hallowed venue and was two tenths up on his closest rival on a glorious afternoon at the principality.

The Aussie ace has not put a foot wrong all weekend, topping the timing sheets in all free practice sessions and now qualifying.

He said afterwards, "It's good. We sent a statement on Thursday and been quickest in every session. The race tomorrow and then we will celebrate."

"There is still a lot of fire in this belly. I've done everything I can so far, let's finish the job tomorrow. I'm pumped, it's been a good few days."

It was a bittersweet day for Red Bull, with Ricciardo doing the business but teammate Max Verstappen did not turn a lap in qualifying.

A couple of hours earlier, in the morning free practice, the Dutchman smacked the barriers hard exiting the swimming pool complex. There was not enough time between FP3 and qualy to sort out the wrecked RB14.

Verstappen will start from the back of the grid when a front-row lockout by the Blues was on the cards, with the Dutchman a pre-qualy favourite for pole position.

Last year's winner Sebastian Vettel was second quickest in the Ferrari, nearly a quarter of a second adrift of the top time with Kimi Raikkonen, on pole last year, set to start behind his German teammate on the grid from fourth place.

Splitting the Reds on the timesheets was the Mercedes of championship leader Lewis Hamilton in third and Valtteri Bottas fifth, albeit nearly half a second shy of his teammate.

Hamilton summed up his session "Congratulations to Daniel. They've had the pace all weekend and we knew that would be the case. I gave it everything I could. I was up a little bit on the last lap but wasn't able to hold onto it."

"It's still a long race ahead of us tomorrow. I don't think Red Bull have tried the other tyres yet so it will be interesting to see how we all go," added the Silver Arrows driver.

Esteban Ocon was best of the rest, ending sixth quickest in the Force India and emerging on top of a very close and tense midfield battle where 0.16 of a second separated the next five drivers.

Typically Fernando Alonso dug deep in qualifying, after a wayward FP3 session, to claim seventh in the McLaren while teammate Stoffel Vandoorne failed to make it into Q3. He was 12th.

Renault's Carlos Sainz was eighth, ahead of Sergio Perez in the Force India and Toro Rosso's Pierre Gasly rounding out the top ten.

In Q1 Ricciardo was quickly on the pace and with his first flying lap he took P1 with a time of 1:12.769. The Australian hit a wall of traffic at the end of the lap, however, and as such his P1 time was quickly bypassed by that of Räikkönen.

Ricciardo was quickly back in front, though, finding a gap in the traffic to post a lap of 1:12.013. That was good enough to keep him in P1 until the flag fell, with the Red Bull driver eventually finishing four-tenths of a second ahead of Vettel and Räikkönen.

In the final runs, Sauber’s Leclerc went off at Ste Devote and brought out the yellow flags. That compromised a number of final runs and in the end out went Hartley, Ericsson, Stroll and Magnussen.

Ricciardo was again to the fore in Q2, quickly muscling his way to the top of a timesheet with a lap of 1:11.353 that left clear of Vettel and Raikkonen. He retired to the garage immediately, content to wait it out and see how the session evolved.

Further back, Mercedes gambled and bolted on ultrasoft tyres for their drivers’ first runs, hoping that the purple-banded tyres would yield a lap time good enough to earn a Q3 berth and allow them to start on the more durable tyre on a circuit where track position is paramount.

The strategy quickly proved the wrong one, however, and with the session edging onto the final five minutes and with Hamilton 10th and Bottas 14th the team switched plans and pitted both for hypersofts. Hamilton blasted to third with his first flyer and Bottas followed to take fifth.

Räikkönen and Vettel found more time on their final runs to claim second and thirds respectively behind Ricciardo and Hamilton dropped to fourth ahead of his team-mate.

At the bottom of the top 10, the improvement of the Mercedes bounced Gasly to P12, but the Frenchman did a good job to find time on his final runs to claim P10 with a lap of 1:12.313.

That meant that out went Renault’s Hulkenberg in P11, followed by Vandoorne, Sirotkin, Sauber, Leclerc and Grosjean.

Ricciardo again set the pace in Q3 and this time it was by a significant margin. Bottas was first across the line to take provisional pole, but he quickly dropped down the order by Hamilton who set a lap of 1:11.261. Ricciardo though was flying and when he crossed the line he was 0.451s up on Hamilton and the only man under the 1m11s mark.

And so it proved. Vettel found time on his second run to climb above Hamilton, but neither could get near the Red Bull driver, who was going even quicker until he was told that his opening time had secured pole. He backed out of his final run and settled for the lap of 1:10.810 that now stands as the fastest ever lap of Monaco.

Behind third-placed Hamilton, 2017 pole position man Räikkönen was fourth ahead of Bottas, Ocon, Alonso, Sainz and Perez. The top ten order was rounded out by Gasly.