Rosberg pushes back and defeats Hamilton for Monaco pole

Rookie Daniil Kvyat was the first victim of Monaco qualifying, losing control as he charged down into the Nouvelle Chicane. He spun and clipped wall, which damaged his front wing. He entered the pit lane for repairs and made it back out in time to lay down a lap fast enough to save himself from elimination.

Kevin Mangussen almost became the second crash of the day when he locked up entering the St. Devote corner. He managed to avoid hitting anything and continued without further problems. As Q1 ended, Marcus Ericsson overdrove a corner, locking up his tires in the process. His Caterham made contact with Felipe Massa, sending both cars nose-first into the tires.

Eliminated in Q1 - Esteban Guttierrez, Adrian Sutil, Jules Bianchi, Max Chilton, Kamui Kobayashi, and Marcus Ericsson.

Jean-Eric Vergne was quickest, gaining a considerable advantage with those super-soft tires.

Following Q1, three incidents were being investigated. One involving Sergio Perez impeding Esteban Guttierrez's lap, the second being the Ericsson/Massa crash, and the the third being another blocking incident between Pastor Maldonado and Daniil Kvyat.

UPDATE: Marcus Ericsson will start Sunday's Monaco Grand Prix from the pit lane after colliding with Massa. He's also had two penalty points added to his license.

Partway through the session, an irritated Vettel reported that he no longer had KERS. With a plethora of electrical issues plaguing the four-time World Champion this year, he repeated to his team twice, "You need to sort this problem out, you need to sort this problem out."

This round went off much cleaner than its predecessor.

Eliminated in Q2 - Nico Hulkenberg, Jenson Button, Valtteri Bottas, Romain Grosjean, Pastor Maldonado, and Felipe Massa.

Mercedes went 1-2 in Q2, with Lewis Hamilton leading the way.

With five minutes remaining in the session, Nico Rosberg sat first but the margin over teammate Lewis Hamilton was microscopic. They returned to the track with just one lap to solidify their grid positions. Nico Rosberg blew one of the corners but was fortunate to find a run-off area.

A local yellow was displayed, spoiling teammate Lewis Hamilton's lap time. At that point, Hamilton was on pace to go faster. Therefore, Nico Rosberg claimed his sixth career pole and his second consecutive here, relegating Lewis to P2. The margin was just six hundredths. A nice story from qualifying was rookie Daniil Kvyat, who will start ninth after a crash in Q1 that damaged the front of his Toro Rosso. It was a fantastic comeback.

The entire top ten was as follows - Nico Rosberg, Lewis Hamilton, Daniel Ricciardo, Sebastian Vettel, Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, Jean-Eric Vergne, Kevin Magnussen, Daniil Kvyat, and Sergio Perez.

During the post-race press conference, you can see a very despondent and upset Hamilton as his teammate Rosberg sat smiling from ear-to-ear.

The inner-team battle at Mercedes is certainly on at Monaco.

UPDATE: Rosberg is now under investigation by the stewards for going off during the final seconds of qualifying.

UPDATE 2: Stewards take NO action against Nico Rosberg after his off at the conclusion of qualifying; remains on pole for Monaco GP. After examining the video and telemetry data, they could find no evidence of Rosberg's off at turn five being intentional.