The season isn’t over just yet for Max Verstappen.
The 2022 Formula One champion backed up his win last weekend at Circuit of the Americas with a pole at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City. It’s only the fifth F1 pole of the season for the Dutchman, and it came once again with his Red Bull as the underdog on the grid.
Mercedes drivers were strong all weekend long leading up to qualifying, as it was thought the thin air of the high-altitude city would play into their hands. The silver arrows still had a strong qualifying session, with George Russell starting second and Lewis Hamilton third. But Verstappen blitzed the pair, posting a lap that was three tenths of a second faster than Russell.
Sergio Perez will start his home Grand Prix in fourth, while Carlos Sainz struggled and qualified just fifth in his Ferrari. Valtteri Bottas turned some heads with his sixth-place effort, while Charles Leclerc turned them the wrong way, performing even worse than his teammate by qualifying seventh.
The battle for fourth in the world constructors’ standings continues, as Lando Norris qualified eighth and ahead of the two Alpine drivers, Fernando Alonso (ninth) and Esteban Ocon (tenth). Norris’ McLaren team trails Alpine by 11 points on the year.
There were no incidents in qualifying, outside of a few deleted lap times due to drivers going out of bounds on the tight Mexico City circuit.
Q2
Daniel Ricciardo just missed out on making it to Q3 by just .05 of a second and will start Sunday’s race in 11th. Zhou Guanyu, Yuki Tsunoda, Pierre Gasly and Kevin Magnussen were all also eliminated in this section of qualifying.
Q1
No issues occurred in the first of three qualifying sessions. Mick Schumacher was first out in 16th, followed by his mentor Sebastian Vettel in 17th. Lance Stroll, Alex Albon and Nicholas Latifi also did not advance to Q2, in that order.
Lights out for the Mexico City Grand Prix will come on Sunday, October 30th at 4 p.m. ET. Coverage will be provided by Sky Sports through ESPN.
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