F1 – McLaren’s Lando Norris stormed to a dominant pole position for the Mexico City Formula One Grand Prix yesterday and his teammate Oscar Piastri was set to start seventh with his championship lead at risk.
Briton Norris, 14 points behind Australian Piastri in the standings with five rounds remaining, beat Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to the top spot by 0.262 seconds with a best lap of one minute 15.586.
It was the 14th pole of his F1 career, fifth of the season and first since Belgium in July.
“What a lap. Even I don’t know how I did that,” Norris said over the team radio as he realised pole was his.
“Obviously, it was an incredible lap,” he said after stepping out of the car. “It was one of those laps where everything just came together.”
Ferrari’s Lewis Hamilton, the seven-times world champion chasing his first podium for the team he joined in January, will start third with Mercedes’ George Russell lining up fourth.
Red Bull’s reigning world champion Max Verstappen, 40 points behind Piastri and winner of three of the last four races, qualified fifth with his charge at risk of slowing down.
Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli qualified sixth.
Piastri was eighth at the chequered flag but will move up a place because Williams’ Carlos Sainz, qualifying seventh, has a five-place grid drop carried over from the previous round in Austin.
Norris had shown his pace in final practice when he became the third different driver to top the timesheets in the three sessions, punching out an impressive lap 0.345 faster than anyone else.
The Briton was fourth in the first phase of qualifying led by Racing Bulls’s Isack Hadjar ahead of Hamilton and Russell, while Verstappen was ninth and Piastri 10th after abandoning a fastest lap.
Norris was fastest in phase two, with Hamilton and Russell again second and third, while Verstappen and Piastri were fourth and seventh respectively.
The Australian had flirted with a shock exit, out of the top 10 until his final effort secured his place in the final shootout.
Leclerc then put his Ferrari on provisional pole, ahead of Norris and Hamilton with Verstappen fourth and Piastri fifth ahead of their final flying laps.
“It’s a long run down to Turn One...the race pace from the Ferraris is normally very strong,” Norris said. “I’m expecting a battle, I’m not expecting it to be easy. Eyes forward and I’ll see how much I can win by.”
Hadjar will start in eighth place, with Haas’s Oliver Bearman ninth and Verstappen’s teammate Yuki Tsunoda completing the top 10 after qualifying 11th.
The Mexican Grand Prix will celebrate its 10th anniversary with another sold-out crowd – an accomplishment celebrated by promoters who worried the absence of Sergio Perez in the field this year would cause a decline.
Approximately 150,000 people are expected today at Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez.
Alejandro Soberon Kuri, the founder and CEO of promoters Grupo CIE and OCESA, said Perez not having a ride this season forced them work harder to sell out the race. Tickets go on sale nearly a year in advance and because the Mexican driver was still with Red Bull at the time, there was an initial early rush on purchasing.
But when Perez was fired at the end of the season, sales slowed, Kuri said yesterday.
“It was an interesting year for us because of the absence of Checo, who is very much beloved by the Mexican fans,” he said. “But we were very sure that we had a lot of traction with the community. They’re very fond of Formula 1, very knowledgeable about Formula 1, and again, another sellout.”
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