MEXICO CITY – Valtteri Bottas and Mercedes scored a surprise pole for the Mexican Grand Prix during qualifying Saturday at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez.
Max Verstappen and Red Bull had dominated the weekend up until qualifying, which is when Mercedes stepped up. Bottas was able to roar to the pole thanks to his best time of 1:15.875 in Q3. He was followed by his teammate Lewis Hamilton, who stopped the clock at 1:16.020.
“It was an awesome lap. Especially my lap in the first run of Q3. I couldn’t quite match my sectors in the second one, but I think honestly that first run in Q3 was one of my best laps,” Bottas said. “It’s a good feeling. This morning actually the car was really good: we were lacking a bit of pace on lap 1 but I think with higher temperatures this afternoon than in the morning it came our way. We also tried to optimize everything with tires, temps and setup and it was a joy to drive! Looking ahead to the start, it is a long, long straight and for sure, the cars behind with the tow will have good opportunities so we’ll need a good start and at least, as a team, it’s good that we have two cars ahead and hopefully we can try and keep the positions.”
With Mercedes locking out the front row, Verstappen qualified third.
“P3 isn’t so bad considering we were really struggling to get the tires to work today, we were sliding around a lot,” Verstappen said. “My first lap in Q3 wasn’t great, the grip was terrible so when I saw the gap to Mercedes, I thought that was fair enough. We needed to find a better balance in the car so we tried to make a few changes to how our car was running and then I think the second lap of Q3 was looking okay. I don’t know what happened in front of me but I saw Checo and Yuki both go wide and I saw a lot of dust so I thought that a car had crashed. I’ve been caught out by yellow flags here before so I slowed down, as a result I lost a lot of momentum and time. It’s a shame that we both aren’t locking out the front row tomorrow after being so competitive all weekend. Tomorrow is a new day and hopefully the race will be exciting, there’s a long run to the first corner so let’s see what happens.”
He’ll be joined in row two by his Red Bull Racing teammate, Sergio Perez. AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly qualified fifth.
Carlos Sainz Jr., Daniel Ricciardo, Charles Leclerc, Yuki Tsunoda and Lando Norris completed the top-10 in qualifying. Tsunoda and Norris will be forced to start at the rear due to engine changes.