Lando Norris claims F1 Mexico City GP pole as teammate Oscar Piastri falters

Lando Norris claimed pole position for the Mexico City Grand Prix, with a superb lap for McLaren at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. The Briton left his title rivals in his wake and in so doing earned a chance to make a major impact on the championship standings and potentially retake the lead.

Enjoying a huge boost to his world championship ambitions, Norris delivered perhaps his best lap of the season in qualifying, to beat the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton into second and third. Of greater import was that his fellow title protagonists Max Verstappen and Oscar Piastri, Norris’s McLaren teammate, could manage only fifth and eighth fastest respectively.

The pole was a real statement of intent from Norris and McLaren and exactly the riposte they required after the recent momentum Verstappen has gathered as he closed the gap to the leaders. Having been 104 points behind Piastri after the Dutch GP in August, the defending champion has won three of the last four meetings and is now just 40 points off the Australian and 14 points behind Norris.

It has been an extraordinary turnaround for Red Bull and their driver, and after which Norris badly needed to reassert some authority, having not taken pole since the Belgian GP. To finally do so and start the race from the front foot was a major step in steadying the ship. If he wins and Piastri finishes below second, the British driver will hold the lead of the championship for the first time since the fifth round of the season in Saudi Arabia.

Norris acknowledged that it had been a significant moment he hoped to exploit. “I’m happy to be back on pole, it’s been a long time,” he said. “It’s one of those laps where you don’t know what happened, it felt decent but when I saw it was a [one minute] 15.5, I was surprised.

“I’m here to win. I’ll be looking forward, I have some quick guys behind me. I’m not expecting it to be easy.”

He exhibited a cool command in qualifying that was indicative of how the McLaren remains an enormously strong car and indeed how comfortable and confident Norris can be when he has it hooked up. This stood in stark contrast to his teammate, however.

Piastri struggled, off the pace of the frontrunners and unable to challenge for the top spot. It was a similar lack of competitiveness to that he experienced at the last round in Austin as the Australian’s pace over the single lap he demonstrated earlier in the season appears to be sorely lacking. He has not qualified better than third since the Dutch GP, which has been crucial in the way his title lead has been whittled away. He will start from seventh owing to a grid penalty for Williams’s Carlos Sainz.

Oscar Piastri looks rueful after a tough qualification. Photograph: Peter Fox/Getty Images

Third place was also a significant moment for Hamilton, his first top three qualifying place of the season and he enjoyed the moment after a difficult start to his new career with Ferrari. “I’m really happy, I’m honoured to be up here with Charles and Lando, these guys have been so quick all year,” Hamilton said. “It’s obviously hard to beat these guys but P3 is the perfect spot at this track, so I’m hoping to make the most of that.”

McLaren, who have not been on pole here since Gerhard Berger took the top spot in 1990, will also be confident there is more to come, for Norris at least. Their car has looked very strong in race-pace simulations in Mexico, with Norris putting in some very strong runs. The long drag to turn one of 830m may prove crucial as the leaders jockey for a slipstream, and emerging in clean air in front from the first corner could be key, but on this form keeping the leading McLaren behind in any circumstances is likely to be a mighty task.

Norris had been comfortably on top heading into the first runs in Q3 when Verstappen opened with a strong first lap with a time of 1min 16.455sec. Norris followed and with an immense second and third sectors went quicker by almost three tenths. Leclerc had more to come and managed to take the top spot from Norris, with Hamilton moving up to third in front of Verstappen, as Ferrari showed real pace.

On the final runs Piastri was the first of the McLarens out, with Verstappen in his wake. The Australian could not match Leclerc and Verstappen also missed out, but Norris was flying behind them. Fastest in both the first two sectors, he threw the car into the corners to claim pole with an aggressive precision that Leclerc could not match, ultimately achieving an exceptional lap with a time of 1:15.586, more than two tenths up on the Ferrari.