Given the pace in the previous sessions, it seemed almost certain that Lando Norris would secure pole position for the Mexican Grand Prix. Instead, McLaren struggled with the setup of the MCL38 car, causing more harm than good; Oscar Piastri made some mistakes, going off track and failing to set a competitive time in Q1, while Lando Norris had difficulty in his final flying lap and could do nothing against Carlos Sainz’s best lap time of the day.
Lando Norris will start from the second row at the 4.304-kilometre Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City, a decent position in Mexico, which is why he was smiling during media interviews. “I’m happy with third place. I found the limit of the car pretty quickly, but I struggled to extract everything in the last two laps; Q1 and Q2 were great, but I couldn’t improve anymore, and in Q3, I couldn’t find the three-tenths I needed to catch Carlos. In every corner, I was close to locking up and making mistakes. Max and Carlos set some great times, so I’m okay with this. I can’t say I did a great job, but I’m relatively happy. I missed FP1, and then in FP2, we had different tires, so I started off a bit shaky and never felt completely comfortable.” – the British driver explained.
When talking about the race, the number 4 admitted that the Ferrari SF-24 cars are currently the favorites to secure the race win in the Mexico City Grand Prix: “I don’t know how it will go tomorrow. No one has done long runs on tomorrow’s tires, so there are some question marks. However, Ferrari has had great race pace in the last two events; they were even faster than us, so it will be tough. I can’t say for sure that we will beat them with just pace. But if we can get a good start and survive turn 1, it will be interesting.” – Lando Norris concluded.
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