page_title: 2016 Monaco Grand Prix
section_title: Qualifying
hierarchical_section_title: 2016 Monaco Grand Prix / Qualifying
caption_attribution_description: English: Max Verstappen's wreckage at the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix
context_page_description: The 2016 Monaco Grand Prix was a Formula One motor race held on 29 May 2016 at the Circuit de Monaco, a street circuit that runs through the Principality of Monaco. It was the sixth round of the 2016 FIA Formula One World Championship, and marked the seventy-fourth time that the Monaco Grand Prix had been held, as well as the sixty-third time it had been held as a round of the Formula One World Championship since the series inception in 1950.
  Nico Rosberg was the defending race winner having won the past three Monaco Grands Prix in a row and entered the race with a thirty-nine-point lead held over Ferrari driver Kimi Räikkönen in the Drivers' Championship. Rosberg's team, Mercedes, held a 48-point lead over Ferrari in the Constructors' Championship.
  During Saturday's qualifying, Daniel Ricciardo, who was driving for Red Bull Racing, achieved the first pole position of his career. In an eventful race, Mercedes's Lewis Hamilton took victory ahead of Ricciardo, who had lost time during a pitstop when his mechanics did not have the tyres ready for him.
context_section_description: Qualifying consisted of three parts, 18, 15 and 12 minutes in length respectively, with six drivers eliminated from competing after each of the first two sessions. In the first part of qualifying (Q1), the session got interrupted shortly after it had started, as Felipe Nasr came to a halt at the exit of the tunnel, caused by an engine failure. A red flag came out while the car was cleared off the track. When the running resumed, all drivers except for the two at Force India went out on the ultrasoft tyres to set their first lap times. Max Verstappen was the last to set a representative time, but touched the guardrail at the swimming pool chicane and crashed into the wall, causing another red flag period. As the session got back under way, it were the two Manor cars of Rio Haryanto and Pascal Wehrlein, as well as Jolyon Palmer and Marcus Ericsson who joined Nasr and Verstappen on the sidelines, as they were eliminated. Kevin Magnussen meanwhile barely made it into Q2, but was under investigation for exiting the pit lane while it was closed.
  In the second part, Lewis Hamilton quickly set a fast lap time, the quickest of the weekend up to that point, about half a second ahead of his teammate Rosberg. Meanwhile, Daniel Ricciardo set his fastest lap on the harder supersoft compound tyre, meaning that he would be able to start the race on them, should it have stayed dry. On the back end, Williams struggled for pace and both Valtteri Bottas and Felipe Massa missed out on Q3 by qualifying 11th and 14th respectively. Also eliminated were Esteban Gutiérrez, Jenson Button, Romain Grosjean and Magnussen.
  As Q3 started, Lewis Hamilton stopped in the pit lane with a loss of power and was pushed back into the garage. He was eventually able to go on track and qualified third, after starting several quick laps only to abandon them to leave his final run to the last moment. He was however beaten to pole position by Ricciardo, who was almost three-tenths of a second faster than second placed Rosberg, with Vettel following in fourth almost a second slower. Nico Hülkenberg managed fifth ahead of Kimi Räikkönen, who was to serve a five-place grid penalty for an unscheduled gearbox change, leaving him eleventh on the grid. Carlos Sainz Jr., Sergio Pérez, Daniil Kvyat and Fernando Alonso rounded up the top ten. Ricciardo's pole position was the first for a Renault-powered turbocharged car since Ayrton Senna's front-of-the-grid start at the 1986 Mexican Grand Prix for Lotus.
caption: The wreckage of Max Verstappen's car is cleared off the track.
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