McLaren puzzled by qualifying issues after strong early pace

Having shown dominant pace in the final practice session at the Mexico City Grand Prix, McLaren has been left puzzled over its issues in the all-imortant qualifying session.

McLaren showed frightening pace in the third and final practice session at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, with Oscar Piastri heading his team-mate Lando Norris. The margin over the rest of the field left McLaren look the favourites for pole.

However, Piastri had a disastrous opening segment of qualifying. While he looked strong, he made a mistake on his first flying lap on Pirelli’s softs which meant that he lost his lap time to track limits. He attempted a second push lap, but he could not set a good enough lap to progress into the second qualifying segment.

Despite the difficult situation, the Australian pins hope on a recovery drive in today’s Mexico City F1 race, claiming that Norris had found himself in a similar situation last season.

“A painful and disappointing afternoon. My first lap on the Soft was looking good and would have been enough to progress to Q2 until I lost a lot of time going over the curb and had the lap deleted as a result. I then didn’t have enough grip on the second push lap to be able to put it all together.

“We’re in a similar starting position to Lando at this event last year, and he still had a good race, so we’ll look to push forward and make up as many places as we can. The car is in a good spot so we’ll be aiming for the points tomorrow.”

His team-mate Lando Norris did make it all the way to Q3, but as the track cooled he couldn’t step things up to compete with Ferrari, and was also pipped by his championship rival Verstappen.

The Briton made a series of mistakes on his first push lap in Q3 before trying to control his aggressive approach on his final push lap, but it was only enough for a third spot on the grid after his dominant showing in Q1 and Q2.

“I’m pretty happy with third. I feel like I got to the limit of the car quite quickly, but I struggled to get a lot more out of it in the final two laps. It’s tough to know what to expect tomorrow.

“None of us have done proper long runs on the tyres that we’re going to be on, so there’s question marks for everyone. It’s going to be tough but we’re in a good position and I’m looking forward to it.”

Commenting on a difficult qualifying session, McLaren team boss Andrea Stella added: “We had a competitive car heading into the Qualifying session, but conditions were tricky. It was difficult to put together clean laps.

“With Lando, P3 is a pretty good grid position. Up until Q3, his performance was very strong, finishing P1 in both Q1 and Q2. His first attempt in Q3 wasn’t quite there and it was important that he put together a strong lap to get onto the first two rows with a decent second attempt. It’s a long way to Turn One and sometimes at this circuit, pole position isn’t the place to be.

“On Oscar’s side, we got a lap deletion, which meant there was quite a bit of pressure on the second run. With compromised grip levels we didn’t put together a fast enough lap to progress in what has proved recently to be very competitive Qualifying sessions. This weekend, Oscar is also still running the previous specification of floor and front wing. While that alone doesn’t explain today’s result, it is important to note.

“Oscar starts P17 and, being optimistic, that’s where Lando started last year before finishing P5. The pace is strong, he can make up places. The mission tomorrow is clear: to move forward with both cars.”