Ferrari Flies High as Sainz Edges Out Verstappen, Norris for Mexico City Pole

Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz captured his first pole position of the Formula 1 season in Mexico City as he upstaged title rivals Max Verstappen and Lando Norris.

Sainz flew around the high-altitude Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez and set a time of 1:15.946 seconds to claim top spot for Sunday’s 71-lap race.

“Yeah, it’s very sweet, it’s not normal to have two strong laps around this track, you’re sliding in the lap, it’s hard to put it together, and I’m very happy to be on pole and confirm [the pace] from Austin,” said Sainz.

All eyes will be on the 830-metre drag to Turn 1 on Sunday, which is the longest run to the first braking zone all season, with the right-left-right complex barely visible from the starting grid.

Title leader Verstappen will line up from second, with Norris, who is 57 points behind in the championship, directly behind in third spot.

Verstappen had a Friday he described as a “write-off” owing to car problems and entered qualifying on the backfoot, with his first push lap deleted for exceeding track limits. But he rallied and vaulted from the foot of the top 10 to second.

“Naturally yesterday I barely did any laps,” Verstappen said. “We’re playing a lot of catch up. FP3 was not very good, so I was already under a lot of pressure to have a good qualifying, and then of course my lap time got taken away, so it added a little bit more pressure. But I’m very happen to be on the front row – I honestly didn’t expect that to be possible.”

On his session Norris said: “Honestly, I’m relatively happy-ish, still to be P3. Not a great day yesterday, I mean I missed obviously FP1. I felt like a bit on the back foot, but probably not as much as what Max was. I’ve not been that comfortable at all.

“I found some good steps into qualifying, and obviously Q1 and Q2 were very good, but I found the limit very quickly. I was happy to find the limit and things were good, but just couldn’t progress from there. The car was too difficult to drive in Q3, too difficult to get especially three-tenths out of it compared to Carlos. So happy with third.”

Haas had another encouraging day as Kevin Magnussen qualified a season-best seventh while Nico Hulkenberg rounded out the top 10.

There was more woe for under pressure home hero Sergio Perez.

Perez was all at sea in the RB20 and was eliminated from the first stage of qualifying, meaning he is set to line up from a lowly 18^th on the grid.

“I’ve been struggling quite a bit with braking,” said Perez. “Every time I try to brake and attack the braking, I just put too much energy through the tires, and that makes it very tricky for me to stop the car.

2024 Mexican Grand Prix Qualifying Results

1. Carlos Sainz

2. Max Verstappen

3. Lando Norris

4. Charles Leclerc

5. George Russell

6. Lewis Hamilton

7. Kevin Magnussen

8. Pierre Gasly

9. Alex Albon

10. Nico Hulkenberg

11. Yuki Tsunoda

12. Liam Lawson

13. Fernando Alonso

14. Lance Stroll

15. Valtteri Bottas

16. Franco Colapinto

17. Oscar Piastri

18. Sergio Perez

19. Esteban Ocon

20. Zhou Guanyu