Sainz reveals how he was inspired by Lando Norris’s racing style in Esports

On the back of his sensational pole position in yesterday’s Mexico City Grand Prix, Carlos Sainz explained why he elected to take an unusual line coming out of the last corner of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

It was not surprising to see many drivers struggle to get to grips with the tricky track as the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez poses a unique set of challenges due its altitude.

While McLaren’s Lando Norris excelled in the opening stages of qualifying, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz caused a surprise in Q3, displaying impressive speed in the all-important last qualifying segment. The Spaniard completed two flying runs in Q3 and both of them would have been good enough to grab pole.

Sainz started from pole for the last time back in Singapore in 2023 which means that his achievement in yesterday’s qualifying was his first pole position this year.

Asked to explain why he was hugging the pit wall at the end of the lap, Sainz has revealed that the has been inspired by McLaren driver Lando Norris’ driving style in virtual racing.

“No, it’s just a Lando thing that he normally likes to do. I think it’s from iRacing or something. He likes doing short distance to the line. And I said, well, I lose nothing by, maybe if it’s faster, maybe cutting a bit the distance.

“Maybe it gives me a thousand or two thousandths of a second that I’m going to make sure this time I don’t leave them out there. And yeah, I remember from our McLaren days he used to do it a lot and I was a bit puzzled. But yeah, tyre preparation has been a hot topic in Ferrari the last few races because we feel like in the race we’re always very strong, but we seem to lack something come qualifying.

“This year’s car is very good on tyres, but I think that sometimes it means that in quali you cannot maybe extract the maximum out of the tyres in the first timed lap on the Soft tyres. And yeah, I put a bit of focus on that during the break, the three-week break. came into Austin and Mexico with a couple of things that seemed to pay off.

Pushed on to reveal his expectations for today’s Mexico City Grand Prix, Sainz has acknowledged that it will be very difficult to hold on to the first position given the length from the grid to the first corner.

“Yeah, relatively confident because I know my race pace should be good tomorrow. Probably the biggest difficult thing will be the run down into Turn 1 and starting on pole with a slipstream, no? But I think you can still defend, you can still make it stick into Turn 1 starting on pole and that will be my target tomorrow.

“Not much, really. I just need to make sure I do a good 0-100, which is the most important thing when you start on pole, just make sure you do a good jump. And from there obviously do the best I can to defend.

“I have two guys behind fighting for quite important things tomorrow and the run down into Turn 1 should be interesting. I have obviously less to lose in that sense and I’ll make sure that I try and keep P1.”