Red Bull Racing’s Daniel Ricciardo beats teammate Max Verstappen to pole in Formula 1 Mexico Grand Prix with Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton in third.
Q1:
The weather conditions remained dry but cloudy for the first part of qualifying with Valtteri Bottas heading teammate Hamilton and Red Bull’s Verstappen – despite the Mercedes drivers completing a run on the ultrasoft compound.
With the track evolution game strong, many drivers just manage to get through Q2 in dying moments with both the Haas and Williams cars out in the session along with McLaren’s Stoffel Vandoorne.
In 16th was Haas’ Romain Grosjean (1m16.911s) ahead of Vandoorne (1m16.966s) and Haas’ teammate Kevin Magnussen (1m17.599s) with Williams’ Lance Stroll (1m17.689s) and Sergey Sirotkin (1m17.886s) rounding the 20 runners.
Q2:
The tyre strategy game was on in the second part of qualifying with Mercedes, Ferrari and Red Bull doing their quick lap on the ultrasoft compound with Racing Point Force India trying the supersoft compound in their first run.
Verstappen headed Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel at the front of the pack as Racing Point Force India’s Esteban Ocon (1m16.844s) was the first driver outside the Top 10 in 11th to miss out on a spot in Q3 – the Frenchman completed his run on a set of ultrasoft tyres.
He was followed by McLaren’s Fernando Alonso (1m16.871s) in 12th on the hypersoft tyre with Racing Point Force India’s Sergio Perez (1m17.167s) in 13th but on the ultrasoft compound. Toro Rosso’s Brendon Hartley (1m17.184s) was the last runner in 14th.
The Kiwi on the hypersoft compound as well made a slight error on his final lap as his teammate Pierre Gasly opted not to set a lap time with a mammoth grid penalty to his name due to an engine change.
Q3:
The first run in the final part of qualifying saw Verstappen (1m14.785s) stay in front of Vettel (1m14.970s) and Hamilton (1m15.022s) but all the three drivers separated by only 0.237s with their teammates following them.
The second run changed the whole course of qualifying with Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo surprising everyone with a pole lap of 1m14.759s to beat his much fancied teammate Verstappen (1m14.785s) by 0.026s in a Red Bull front-row lock-out.
The Australian scored his first pole since Monaco and Red Bull’s second of the 2018 as Verstappen has to wait for another time to grab his career’s first pole. Hamilton’s third place pushed Ferrari’s Vettel (1m14.970s) to fourth.
Bottas (1m15.160s) finished fifth with Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen (1m15.330s) only sixth ahead of Renault’s Nico Hulkenberg (1m15.827s) as the best of the rest with Carlos Sainz (1m16.084s) behind him.
The two Renault drivers were followed by the Sauber duo with Charles Leclerc (1m16.189s) ahead of Marcus Ericsson (1m16.513s) completing the Top 10.
