Carlos Sainz has taken a stunning pole position for the Mexico City Grand Prix, with the Ferrari driver going fastest from Max Verstappen and Lando Norris during what had been a dramatic qualifying session featuring a red flag and two shock exits in Q1.
While Verstappen looked like he initially sealed provisional pole in the first runs of Q3, the time was deleted due to track limits, which promoted Sainz up into the top spot.
And when it came to the second runs, the Spaniard went even quicker by pumping in an impressive 1m 15.946s.
Verstappen claimed P2, the Red Bull man’s time 0.255s back from Sainz, while Norris took third after previously setting the pace in Q1 and Q2 for McLaren.
The full top 10 are- Pole: Sainz, P2: Verstappen, P3: Norris, P4: Leclerc, P5: Russell, P6: Hamilton, P7: Magnussen, P8: Gasly, P9: Albon, P10: Hulkenberg.
A lovely result for Ferrari, especially coming off the back of last weekend aswell! It’s Carlos’ best ever qualifying at Mexico and his first pole position of this season, which makes Ferrari the only team with both drivers on pole this season.
Leclerc starting fourth aswell, which is a good result, he will be hoping to grab a podium at least. As coming into this weekend, Ferrari look like they are the team to win again.
A good result for Max, he had some struggles over the weekend in practice so to turn it around in qualifying is good, now to just hope that it all goes okay in the race.
Perez made a bit of a shock Q1 exit at his home grand prix, starting 18th, which is a shame as no one wants to perform badly at home, but this is unfortunately just normal now…
McLaren have had a bit of a mixed result, Norris qualifying third, which is I believe the best place out of the top three to qualify here, as it is quite a long run down to turn one.
His teammate qualified in P17, which was a shock, and his run of Q3 appearances comes to an end. He has a lot of work to do if he wants to score some points for the constructors championship.
A good result for Mercedes, P5 and P6, hopefully they can capitalise on it during the race and score some good points, maybe even score a podium if they are lucky.
A good result for Haas, P7 and P10, there having really good results at the moment, due to the upgrades they have brought, if they keep having good results and scoring points this is going to help their battle in the Constructor’s championship fight with VCARB…
I’m very happy. A great couple of laps. A lot of times around Mexico you always have the feeling like you cannot put a lap together and it’s extremely difficult with how much sliding there is, but today honestly my two laps of Q3 were pretty much identical, almost perfect. I just put two really solid laps in Q3, enough for pole, and I’m very happy because that’s not normally the case around Mexico with how tricky it is.
Carlos Sainz on pole.
Jordan's Track Talk 
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