Carlos Sainz takes a stunning pole position in the Mexico GP
Mexico City, Saturday October 26 – During the Formula 1 Mexico City Grand Prix 2024 Presented by Heineken, which had an attendance of 142,951, Carlos Sainz produced a stunning 204.018 km/h lap to give Ferrari their fourth pole position in the modern era at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodriguez ahead of Sunday’s race.
In a thrilling hour of Qualifying action the 30-year-old Spaniard, in his last season with the Italian team, set the 4.303-km circuit alight as he claimed his first pole position since Singapore in 2023 and the sixth of his F1 career with a time of 1 minute 15.946 seconds.
“Great couple of laps!”, said Sainz. “A lot of times around Mexico you really feel that you cannot put a lap together and it’s extremely difficult with how much sliding there is, but today my two laps in Q3 were pretty much identical and almost perfect. Our number one priority now is to bring both cars home but if you win the race, those seven or eight points that you get is important for the team in the Constructors’ Championship. I’ll be looking forward to keeping that P1 into Turn 1 and from there hopefully our race pace should be good enough to win it.”
Championship leader and five-time Mexico winner Max Verstappen’s Red Bull will start from the front row, the World Champion recovering from a tricky Friday to push title rival Lando Norris’s McLaren back on to the second row. Ferrari is the only team in the hunt for the Constructors’ title to have both cars in the top 10, with Charles Leclerc alongside the British driver.
“Yesterday I barely did any laps, so we’re playing a lot of catch-up,” said 27-year-old Dutchman Verstappen, who had an engine change overnight. “FP3 was not very good, so I was already under a lot of pressure to have a good Qualifying. Then my lap time got taken away, so that added a little bit more pressure! But I’m very happy to be on the front row, I didn’t expect that to be possible.”
Verstappen shared Sainz’s feelings about the circuit. “It’s probably one of the hardest tracks to get right,” he added. “Street circuits are difficult, and this one as well: low downforce, it’s very easy to have a lock-up or a slide, the tires overheat immediately, it’s one of the trickier ones on the calendar.”
While Norris was “pretty happy” with third, it was another disastrous day at home for Mexican star Sergio Pérez, eliminated in the first segment of Qualifying for the fifth time in his challenging 2024 season. “I just couldn’t get on top of it, I couldn’t stop the car soon enough,” the 34-year-old explained. Checo, who crashed out on the first corner here last year, knows he has another tough Sunday ahead. “It’s very important to try and maximize the day,” he said. “If we are able to score some good points it will be a tremendous effort, but it’s going to be very difficult from the position we are in.”
The other big name eliminated in the first 18-minute segment was Norris’s teammate Oscar Piastri, who had one lap time deleted, then made what he called “a very poor mistake” that cost him a full second. “Painful,” said the 23-year-old Australian after compromising McLaren’s bid to keep their lead in the Constructors’ Championship.
The third row of the grid belongs to Mercedes, with George Russell marginally quicker than two-time Mexico winner Lewis Hamilton, but with big names missing from the final segment, some unaccustomed faces took advantage to complete the top 10.
Danish veteran Kevin Magnussen, in his final year with Haas, starts seventh alongside Alpine driver Pierre Gasly, with Alex Albon recovering from his own difficult Friday to put his Williams ninth alongside the second Haas of Nico Hülkenberg.
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