The pole position of the eighteenth round of the World Championship is for the Finnish Mercedes driver.
Mercedes overturns the prediction and scores in Mexico City with Valtteri Bottas a largely unexpected pole position, with 145 thousandths of advantage over Lewis Hamilton. Max Verstappen has to settle for the third time 350 thousandths from the Finn, while a disappointed Sergio Perez closes the second row (+0.467). Carlos Sainz is sixth with the best of Ferraris, while an undertone Charles Leclerc is only eighth.
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Unexpected qualifications are instead staged in Mexico City, giving away a complete spin of the hierarchies that had emerged from the three free practice sessions. Not only Mercedes puts the arrow (indeed, both …) against Red Bull on the starting grid, but he also does it with Bottas, on the eve of his fifth last GP for the House of Stuttgart and theoretically far from the motivational peak. To push the Finn and his captain Hamilton in front of direct rivals the difficult and at times excited work carried out in the garage of the multiple world champions to understand the reasons for the superiority of the Bulls but above all the evolution of the track and in particular the rise in temperatures. Verstappen and Perez thus have to resign themselves to a second row which complicates a lot the plans of the team headed by a very bold Christian Horner in recent times. The leader of the general collects more than three tenths from pole while the Mexican’s delay is close to half a second. In short, a real turnaround and a prediction that reopens also in view of the race.
Behind the “big four” there are Pierre Gasly and Carlos Sainz, Alpha Tauri therefore in front of the Ferrari. The Spaniard is once again faster than his teammate, a disappointed and self-critical Charles Leclerc who will start from the fourth row together with Daniel Ricciardo who precedes him in the ranking of the times. The Monegasque, below expectations in the Mexican weekend (at least so far), was unable to express himself at his usual level in qualifying. In the challenge with McLaren for third place in the Constructors’ World Championship, the Scuderia di Maranello still has the opportunity to fill the gap in Mexico three and a half points from rivals, mostly because Lando Norris will start from the rear, having replaced the power unit. The British driver closed qualifying with the ninth time ahead of Yuki Tsunoda, he too at the start from the bottom for the same reason and at the center of a small “case”: the Japanese was “accused” by the two Red Bull drivers of having them … distracted, compromising their qualification, moving at a reduced pace (and just beyond the track limits) in the central section of the circuit, the one characterized by two fast “s” connected to each other, after having granted the wake to his teammate Gasly.
The fifth “real” row will therefore see two world champions side by side: Sebastian Vettel with Aston Martin and Kimi Raikkonen with Alfa Romeo. Behind them the other Alfa Sauber of Antonio Giovinazzi and Fernando Alonso with his Alpine. Esteban Ocon (on the other Alpine) is also at the start in the last row to change elements of the power unit Lance Stroll who also closed qualifying prematurely hitting the barriers violently with his Aston Martin at the exit of the curve that leads to the straight of the pits, in the middle of Q1. No physical consequences for the Canadian (who in any case had to undergo a check-up at the circuit medical center) while qualifying – interrupted with the red flag – resumed only after thirty minutes, necessary to restore the protections on the track. .
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