Australian Daniel Ricciardo once again pipped his four-time world champion teammate, Sebastian Vettel, to claim third place for Red Bull on the Monaco Grand Prix grid behind the all-conquering Mercedes team.

But race stewards are studying an incident that gave Nico Rosberg a controversial sixth pole of his career and his second in succession on Saturday.

The 28-year-old German, who lies three points behind his team-ate Lewis Hamilton in the drivers’ title race, lost control of his car and ran down the escape road at Mirabeau on his final flying lap.

Yellow flags then slowed the field, ruining Hamilton’s efforts to improve his time.

Immediately after qualifying Rosberg apologised for the error and said it had not been intentional.

“No, it was not (an ideal way to finish). I thought it was over – I thought the track would ramp up and someone else could beat my time,” said Rosberg.

“I’m happy it worked out. Pole at home is fantastic – it couldn’t be better.

“Of course, I’m sorry for Lewis, I didn’t know where he was. It’s not great.”

All but one of the past 10 races in Monaco have been won by the driver who held pole position but with the exception being Hamilton in 2008, Rosberg cannot afford to take anything for granted.

At the post-qualifying picture and media rounds, Hamilton looked far from happy but had little choice but to accept he was victim of bad luck.

“Yeah, it’s ironic (Rosberg took pole from his own mistake). It was (going) okay, I was up a couple of tenths,” said Hamilton.

The incident is the next intriguing step in the internal team battle between Hamilton and Rosberg for the world title.

So far both drivers have remained civil and respectful towards each other but it seems certain the tension will continue to rise as the stakes get higher.

Ricciardo felt he could have done even better than finish 0.395 seconds behind Rosberg.

“I think all three of us (himself, Rosberg and Hamilton), don’t seem to be too pleased with ourselves,” the Australian said.

“I think we all feel that we’ve left something on the table.

“I fought the car all the way round in qualifying – in turn eight I lost it and the lap was pretty much gone after that.”

The Ferrari duo of Fernando and Alonso and Kimi Raikkonen claimed fifth and sixth.

Jean-Eric Verge (Toro Rosso), Kevin Magnussen (McLaren), Daniil Kvyat (Toro Rosso) and Sergio Perez (Force India) completed the top 10.