Home hero Sergio Perez took fourth, while Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas was a surprise star of qualifying to split the Ferrari drivers and secure sixth on the grid for Sunday’s race at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
After Hamilton had led Q1 and Q2, he lost his opening time in Q3 for cutting Turn 3, with Verstappen leading at the head of the times after those first runs in the final segment, his 1m17.947s breaking into the 1m17s bracket for the first time all session.
Perez, like he had in the first runs, led the pack around for the final fliers and he improved with his last go, but not by enough to topple his teammate nor Russell, who trailed by 0.132s after the opening goes.
Following Perez, the two Ferrari drivers could not recover from slow opening sectors on their last laps, with Sainz unable to improve his personal best from the first runs and the Spaniard ending up fifth.
Leclerc did improve but not by enough to trouble the top positions, which left the focus on the Mercedes drivers after Verstappen then flashed through to improve the best time to a 1m17.775s.
That became the pole lap when Hamilton finally registered a Q3 time that was 0.309s behind Verstappen’s new best and still not quicker than Russell, who lost his final time for sliding off track beyond the Turn 12 exit kerbs entering the stadium but had done enough already to secure second.
While the focus was on the frontrunners, Bottas slipped in a 1m18.401s having been in the top six in both Q1 and Q2 in a strong showing for Alfa.
Behind Leclerc came Lando Norris and Fernando Alonso, who completed just a single run in Q3 during the action lull between the two efforts completed by all the rest, with Esteban Ocon rounding out the top 10 in the other Alpine.
Daniel Ricciardo was the highest-placed faller in Q2, the Australian the only driver not to set a personal best on their final flier, missing out behind Alonso in the middle segment by just 0.053s.
Behind Ricciardo came Zhou Guanyu, then the AlphaTauri pair of Yuki Tsunoda and Pierre Gasly – both frustrated by their lap of grip and the latter particularly annoyed to end up out after completing a clean final run.
The final driver eliminated in Q2 was Kevin Magnussen, who will drop five places on the grid for Sunday’s race for Haas having to fit a sixth internal combustion engine of the year to his car after it ground to a halt during FP1 with Pietro Fittipaldi aboard.
In Q1, Zhou’s last-gasp improvement…
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