First pole of the season for Sainz in Mexico, ahead of Verstappen and Norris!

(Cover picture: Carlos Sainz)

At the conclusion of the third free practice session in Mexico, the performance of the McLarens driven by Norris and Piastri suggested that the fight for pole position would be limited to just the two of them, but it took a great Carlos Sainz to turn the tables and rewrite the outcome of this qualifying session.

As always, after providing you with the final classification, let's find out how and why the Ferrari driver from Madrid managed to secure pole!

A disaster for Piastri in Q1, Ferrari vs McLaren in 2 vs 1 conditions: Sainz makes no mistake...

As mentioned, for McLaren to start qualifying knowing they had almost a 0.3s advantage over the team closest to them (i.e. Ferrari) meant avoiding driving and strategy mistakes, because in order to lock the front row it would have been enough to "squeeze" the MCL38 a little more only when it counted, namely in Q3.

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Instead, and it seems incredible to say it, right from the first heat Oscar Piastri was eliminated! The Australian, paying for a lap that was not up to his teammate's standards and another in which he exceeded the track limits in Turn 12, suffered the same fate that Norris had suffered in Baku, finishing in a miserable P17... With a group of cars whose performances - like every end of season - are becoming closer and closer, it will be very difficult for Oscar to carry out a comeback that could take him into the top 5.

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

By now in 2 versus 1 conditions, the duel between Ferrari and McLaren began to take a more favourable turn for the team from Maranello, which, however, had to "work overtime" to beat a perfect Norris only until Q2. In the final heat, Carlos Sainz was simply perfect in both attempts at his disposal, eventually setting a laptime of 1'15"946, thus being 0.225 s quicker than his closest rival (Verstappen).

Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Carlos' pole takes on even more value when you consider that during free practice and qualifying itself, the SF-24 had not been on top of the third sector, the most twisty of the Hermanos Rodriguez. Instead, it was in Q3 that Sainz managed to optimise every trajectory and hold off faster cars than his Ferrari. Particularly noteworthy was the ingenuity that led him to cut very tightly through the last right-hand corner before the finish line, in order to run even just a few metres less: a sign that in the run-up to the session the Spaniard left no stone unturned, while at the same time keeping this ace up his sleeve until the final stages, to prevent anyone else from copying his line!

Verstappen beyond the limits of his Red Bull RB20!

Behind Sainz, surprisingly, we find not Norris (instead in P3) but an astonishing Max Verstappen. The Dutchman, after a couple of rounds (Monza and Baku) in which he appeared to be in serious trouble, from Singapore onwards once again started to show the world what a Champion he is, and even here in Mexico he managed to put himself ahead of his rival in the World Championship despite the pecking order on the eve of the weekend.

Dom Romney / Motorsport Images

The adjectives for Max have long since run out, and I believe that if at the end of the season in Abu Dhabi he were to become World Champion for the fourth time, it would be the most important Title of his career. It would in fact be the first (along with 2021, but without its famous controversy) in which it's incontrovertible that it was his driving qualities, and not the ones of the vehicle driven, that gave him the chance to excel. But to get to that point there are still five races to go, the first of which will be this very night, at 9pm CET...

Leclerc fourth ahead of the Mercedes, but tonight at the race start...

In fourth position there's Leclerc, who - take it as a joke - after his victories at Monza and Austin (in which he started from the fourth grid slot) has decided to end his Saturdays like this, closing the second row and waiting for a race start that will catapult him ahead of everyone!

Jokes aside, it's ironic that this very circuit lends itself to starts with a real possibility of making up a lot of positions: over the years we've seen so many occasions where the drivers who started from the second row, and not from the first, were at an advantage! This is because, as at Sochi or Barcelona, the first grid slot (and the finish line) are located a long way from the braking point in Turn 1, so whoever has the lead after a good clutch release will not be sure whether he can cope with the first braking zone in front of everyone, such is the power of the slipstream effect...

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

For the Monegasque, therefore, finding a favourable line at the start will be crucial: many will go for the inside, but even then it isn't necessarily the best choice: whatever the choice of the Ferrari driver and his colleagues, the important thing will be to avoid crashes (like the one that took out Perez's Red Bull last year) in view of a race that is 71 laps long, so where patience will be crucial in the early stages.

These thoughts, however, should not distract attention from the fact that Charles suffered a 0.319 s gap from his teammate on their quickest lap, a gap that we rarely see in qualifying (Leclerc's "signature dish"): nothing to worry about, but a sign that the Spaniard concretely sees in this Mexican Grand Prix a chance to win another (last?) time in his Ferrari. Will he succeed?

Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Moving on, the third row is monopolised by the two Mercedes of Russell and Hamilton, with the two W15s in a position to be the fourth fastest cars at the moment, but lucky to take advantage of the Q1 eliminations of Piastri and Perez (even in P18 in his home GP). I find that under normal circumstances, it will be impossible for the English-German team to do better than this, at the end of a season that has little else to say for them in terms of the World Championship standings.

Bad mistake for Tsunoda in Turn 12: a missed opportunity?

While Magnussen (P7), Gasly (P8), Albon (P9) and Hulkenberg (P10) round out the top ten, one of the teams with the most to complain about the final outcome of the Saturday in Mexico was VCARB: its two drivers finished just outside the "elite" Q3 group, and they did so because of a mistake by Yuki Tsunoda, as he was about to complete his final attempt in Q2.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Because of the red flag that came out with his car in the barrier, also his teammate Liam Lawson wasn't able to improve his laptime, something that yesterday was well within the reach of a single-seater that - like last year - finds favourable conditions in Mexico for being quick: without the Japanese driver's mistake, I think the latter had a chance to finish even ahead of Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes. In short, it was really a waste for a team that should be maximising its points haul every weekend, being in a tight battle with Haas for sixth position in the Constructors' Championship.

Overtaking will be tough in the race, the start will be key!

In view of the race, this one is a circuit which - despite a very long straight - presents few overtaking opportunities: this is mainly due to the rarefied air of Mexico City, where the lower density dramatically (around 25%) reduces drag. This means that the DRS effect is much less than at the other tracks, so the overtaking "hotspots" will be limited to Turn 1 and Turn 4, with all the difficulties that this entails, if there's not a clear pace difference in favour of those in front.

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

That said, it's clear that without the possibility of overtaking easily, strategy plays a key role. But, once again, here there's little to be done: with an optimal strategy based on a single pitstop, there will be little to play with, except the lap on which to serve it... Well, I guess you've worked it out: in all likelihood, victory in the Mexican GP will be played out at the start!

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