McLaren Drivers Will Start Far Apart at the Mexico City Grand Prix
“Even I don’t know how I did that.” This was the call over Lando Norris’ radio in Mexico City Q3 Qualifying as he crossed the finish line, taking pole position from Ferrari as he came out ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Charles LeClerc: “The less I know, the better.” It’s his fifth pole in 2025, and it couldn’t have come for him at a better time. Norris trails his teammate Oscar Piastri by only 14 points in the WDC, and four-time World Champion Max Verstappen has reemerged as a threat to the title in recent races. In the Grand Prix on Sunday, Verstappen will start in fourth, with the two Ferraris providing Norris with a sizeable buffer. Piastri, meanwhile, is set to start in seventh position.
Despite establishing a dominant lead in the standings early on in the season, pressure is mounting for Piastri, and that lead is dwindling slowly but surely. Norris has been consistently outperforming the championship leader in the recent Grands Prix as he looks to overtake Piastri in the standings in the few remaining races. With the lead as big as it was earlier in the season, the possibility of Norris passing his teammate looked slim, especially after an unlucky DNF at the Dutch Grand Prix caused Norris to considerably fall behind in points. The expectation for the Mexico City GP was an all-out battle between the three remaining championship contenders, but Qualifying went in a completely different direction. Norris set the pace out of the gates in Q3 while Verstappen and Piastri were simply never able to catch up. Instead, it was the Ferraris who put pressure on Norris for the fastest time, with LeClerc initially taking a faster lap than Norris only to lose pole at the last moment by less than three tenths of a second.
Piastri only managed to take eighth position in Q3, though he’ll automatically gain a position up on the grid at the race start on Sunday thanks to a grid penalty being applied to Carlos Sainz. Sainz was the pole starter in the 2024 Mexico City GP while driving for Ferrari, which was also the last time either he or Ferrari as a team won a Grand Prix. This year, he’ll be starting well behind any of the title fighters, but the gap between Piastri and Norris will still be too far to make up, provided there are no serious racing incidents. Norris stands to gain 25 points towards the championship should he hold his position during the race, more than enough to usurp his teammates' seemingly untouchable hold on the title.
