• Oscar Piastri and Carlos Sainz make up podium
• Winner cuts title gap to Verstappen to 31 points

Charles Leclerc won the Monaco Grand Prix, the Ferrari driver taking his first victory at his home race and becoming the first Monégasque to win here since the Formula One world championship began in 1950.

Leclerc beat McLaren’s Oscar Piastri into second and his Ferrari teammate Carlos Sainz into third in a race marked by a horrifying crash on the opening lap for Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez.

• Oscar Piastri second; Carlos Sainz third
• Champion Max Verstappen down in sixth

Charles Leclerc once more held his nerve on his home circuit to claim pole for the Monaco Grand Prix despite the pressure and an intensity of competition that made the outcome impossible to predict.

Theoretically qualifying is the hardest part of the weekend in Monte Carlo but Leclerc knows only too well he and his Ferrari team must now execute with absolute precision on Sunday if the 26-year-old is finally to see off his Monaco curse.

• British driver pushed Verstappen for victory at Imola
• ‘We expect them to be competitive at all circuits,’ says Horner

Christian Horner and Toto Wolff found themselves in rare agreement as the rival team principals hailed the extraordinary progress of Lando Norris and McLaren over the past 12 months and declared the Briton a contender for the title.

Max Verstappen won the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix at Imola for Red Bull on Sunday but was chased down in the final laps by Norris, who finished 0.7sec behind and believed he could have taken the win with one or two more laps.

• McLaren driver pushed Max Verstappen in tense Imola climax
• Norris revealed he watched golf and boxing the night before

Lando Norris said he was praying for just one more lap to have a shot at victory at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix after a thrilling final fight with Max Verstappen at Imola. The British driver also revealed he had been up the night before the race until 2am, watching the title-fight boxing and the US PGA Championship golf.

Verstappen held on to win at Imola but only after the final laps came alive as Norris hunted him down, closing to within under second and ultimately finishing just 0.725sec behind the world champion. The 24-year-old McLaren driver was convinced that with another lap he would have been able to try to make a pass on Verstappen.

• Norris unable to make move after Red Bull’s tyres wear down
• Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz third, Oscar Piastri fourth for McLaren

Max Verstappen took victory at the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix but only after a spectacular finale when the Red Bull driver was hunted to the flag by McLaren’s Lando Norris, who could could not quite make the move and finished in second, with the Ferrari of Charles Leclerc third.

Oscar Piastri was fourth for McLaren, Carlos Sainz fifth for Ferrari while the Mercedes pair of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton made little impact, finishing in sixth and seventh.

• World champion equals Senna record of eight straight poles
• Oscar Piastri demoted to fifth so Lando Norris second on grid

Max Verstappen had to pull off a comeback he believed was the best he had managed for more than five years to claim pole position for the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, delivering a suitably superb lap under immense pressure that raised him to stand alongside Ayrton Senna with a record eighth consecutive pole.

In the year of the 30th anniversary of Senna’s death at Imola, Verstappen had to dig deep to deliver, after a torrid weekend during which he and Red Bull have struggled with the car’s grip and balance.