Valtteri Bottas, Lewis Hamilton ‘surprised’ by Mexico Grand Prix front row lockout | Racing News – Times of India

Mexico City: Valtteri Bottas claim pole position Mexico Grand Prix With the “surprised” world champion on Saturday Lewis Hamilton a next to him mercedes Front line lockout.
championship leader Max Verstappen, who has a 12-point lead over Hamilton in the title race with five events left, was the third fastest.

other red Bull Driver sergio perez He was fourth in front of his home fans in Mexico City.
“Valtteri did an amazing job, he’s driving very well for the team. Locking the front row is very special,” said his teammate K Hamilton, who clocked 1 minute 15.875 seconds, 1: The only driver to dip below 16.
“They (Red Bull) were six-tenths at one point, but we had better pace when it came to qualifying. I’m as surprised as everyone else.”
For Bottas, it was the 19th pole position of his career, which improved to 18K. René Arnoux As a driver on most poles without winning the world title.

“To be honest, the first run in the third quarter was one of my best laps. It’s a good feeling,” said the Finn.
Verstappen admitted there was a problem with his balance at Red Bull.
“It looked like the balance had gone off a bit through qualifying, but actually on the last lap I was in for a good lap,” said the Dutchman.
“I don’t know what happened in front of me, but two guys were leaving and I thought there was going to be a yellow flag, so I backtracked and of course the lap was destroyed.
“Even with that and not having a great balance I think we could still have gone for that pole lap.”

mercedes team chief toto wolf It was later said that the team order could apply to allow Hamilton to close the championship gap for Verstappen.
“I am a competitor at heart and I always find decisions like these disappointing, but sometimes they are necessary,” Wolff told reporters after qualifying.
“We’ll discuss this with Valtteri and Lewis first because they’re the ones who relate to it and then we’ll see if the situation requires us to do that.”
AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly, Ferrari driver Carlos Sainz, Daniel Ricciardo in McLaren, Charles Leclerc in another Ferrari, Yuki Tsunoda of AlphaTauri and Lando Norris at McLaren all rounded out the top 10 on Saturday.
The first qualifying session was marked by Lance Stroll with his Aston Martin buried in the barriers at the spectacular Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

The opener was red-flagged to clear the debris.
On the resume, Verstappen, a two-time winner in Mexico, took a blistering 1:16.788 from two Mercedes.
Former two-time champion Fernando Alonso at Alpine was the most high-profile driver to fail to make it into Q2.
Hamilton eventually found his pace in Q2, falling down 1min 17sec with a time of 1:16.474, just 0.009 seconds ahead of Verstappen’s earlier attempt.
Japan’s Tsunoda clocked an impressive time of 1:16.071 at Alpha Tauri to be the third-fastest of the season in a single stage.
However, he already knew he was starting Sunday’s race from the back of the grid, with the stroke taking too many engine parts, both of whom also changed engines this season.