A quarter of an hour before the qualifying session which delivered the biggest surprise pole position in Formula 1 for years, Alpine's Pierre Gasly was playing online chess with Mercedes driver George Russell and winning.

"I must say before the quali, I felt pretty confident," the Frenchman said, "because I was picking piece by piece after piece."

Gasly's performance coach Ben Thorne was watching. "For a fun story," Gasly said, "Ben told me, 'OK, well, you're getting George here, but he's going to get you in a few minutes.'"

Gasly said he reacted with a swear word but he was smiling as he recalled the moment. "Turned out that it worked out well. So yeah, it's been fun," he added.

Russell, who lines up second to Gasly, was laughing about it. "He beat me there," the Briton said, "and I thought, 'Well, I think I'll beat you in qualifying,' and here we are, he's ahead of me again."

No-one - especially not Gasly nor his Alpine team - would have predicted the 30-year-old would end up on pole in Monza on Saturday, even though his only win in F1 came at this exact track six years ago. That victory, in the middle of F1's bizarre, spectator-less pandemic season, owed a lot to luck - a remarkable race that ended up with Gasly, then driving for Red Bull's Toro Rosso team, taking a restart from third place and Lance Stroll going off ahead of him on the first lap to gift him the lead once Lewis Hamilton had served a penalty. This pole was not like that. It was absolutely earned on merit.

The Alpine has strong straight-line speed with a low-downforce-leaning aerodynamic design. The car - which has a Mercedes engine, the best in the field - has looked quick all weekend. It had an upgrade that lifted its performance at the last race in the Netherlands. And Gasly and his team absolutely nailed qualifying, while all the usual leading contenders had scrappy sessions one way or another.

"Monza is a bit of unique track as we know," Gasly said. "It definitely exceeded all our expectations." Since this morning, the pace has been better. We managed to make a good step from P3 to quali and I think slightly bigger than the other guys around us. "Straight from Q1, we were a bit surprised to see us up there. Our target was Q3. But then I was P1 in Q1, then P4 in Q2. I didn't want to get too excited but then first run in Q3, I was third again." And then I felt, 'OK, well, I really have a shot at it.' It's probably the first time I really get a true chance and tried to leave everything I had out there."

It was quite hectic through Ascari and Parabolica. I don't think there was definitely much (left) in there. And crossing the line, I knew it will be one of these laps that will be rewarded. But to the point to get to the pole position, I didn't expect that."

Gasly is well liked within the paddock, and has many friends among the drivers, but he has long been one of F1's forgotten heroes, regardless of that win six years ago. A Red Bull protege, his time in the works team in 2019 did not work out. Like so many since, he was crushed by Max Verstappen, and demoted back to the second team after half a season. After sticking with Red Bull for three more years, he was given an opportunity with Alpine, and he hoped a move to a factory team would be his making. But Alpine have stumbled since, until finally showing signs of a revival this season, following Renault's decision to abandon its F1 engine project and switch to Mercedes customer engines. The team had been making headlines already this weekend. On Friday, Gasly lost the podium at Monaco to which he had been promoted after Alpine won an appeal against two penalties for pit-lane speeding, when the FIA court of appeal reinstated the punishment. A few hours later, de facto team boss Flavio Briatore caused an eruption in a news conference when he alleged one of the four judges in the case had "links" with McLaren. It was a claim that appeared to lack any substance, based as it was on a charity event in California in 2018.