Bottas Takes Surprise Pole For Mercedes In Mexico
Calum Gill 21:58 06/11/2021
Valtteri Bottas led a shock second Mercedes front row lockout of the 2021 Formula 1 season as Red Bull’s early promise at the Mexico City Grand Prix crumbled.
Red Bull was sixth tenths of a second clear of Mercedes in FP3, but it had no answer for the pace of Mercedes in the final part of qualifying. Bottas took his second pole in three F1 weekends with two laps good enough to top qualifying. His best was a 01:15.875, 0.145 seconds quicker than his Mercedes team-mate Lewis Hamilton. Hamilton was faster than championship leader Max Verstappen, who complained about the balance of his Red Bull throughout Saturday and required tape to be fitted to his rear wing during qualifying.
Sergio Perez fluffed his final Q3 lap after encountering an errant Yuki Tsunoda, but fortunately for the Mexican his first effort was good enough for a place on the second row alongside Verstappen. Verstappen encountered the duo going off ahead on his final lap and had to lift off, but it was likely the lap wouldn’t have been good enough to break up the all-Mercedes front row. AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly was only a tenth adrift of Perez in fifth place with Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari narrowly beating the McLaren of Daniel Ricciardo to take sixth place on the grid. Charles Leclerc was eighth ahead of Tsunoda and Lando Norris who had to play supportive roles for their respective team-mates as both will head to the back of the grid with engine penalties.
Once the first session of qualifying was properly under way, after a near half-hour delay caused by an early crash for Aston Martin's Lance Stroll, events started as expected, with Verstappen well over half a second clear of the Mercedes drivers. However, in the second part of qualifying, the picture began to change. Having switched to the medium tyres, because of teams' preference to start the race on them over the softs, the Mercedes suddenly became competitive, Hamilton just 0.016 seconds off Verstappen. Few would have been expecting the Mercedes to stay there when the teams reverted to the soft tyres for the final top 10 shoot-out, but that's exactly what happened.
Bottas produced a blistering initial lap to be 0.350 seconds clear of Verstappen, with Hamilton in between them. Verstappen complained of low grip at the rear but was still hopeful of improving enough to fight for pole on his second and final lap, but his chances were over when Tsunoda went off in front of Perez. Bottas said: "It was an awesome lap, especially my lap first lap in Q3. Honestly, it was one of my best laps and it's a good feeling." The Finn admitted he had "definitely surprised myself - we seemed to be off Red Bull but we managed to perfect the set-up". Hamilton congratulated Bottas on an "awesome job" and the seven-time champion said he could not have matched his team-mate's time. "We have generally been behind by half a second," Hamilton said. "We have been working away at the car but they have generally got higher downforce, so we have struggled in certain parts so it's a real surprise to see us on the front row."
Verstappen said: "We seemed to struggle to get the tyres right. The first run was terrible. I knew there was something more available if we could get it right. There was definitely a chance to beat Valtteri's time. It's not a great place to finish after being so competitive all weekend, but it is a long run to Turn One, so let's see. We were just really slow and had terrible grip in Q3. On the last lap we recovered it a bit but it's still not to how we would've liked and not how the car has been behaving in all the practice sessions. Tomorrow we race on different tyres and I expect the balance to be good again. We just had a terrible qualifying."
The rest of the grid
In Q2, Norris was able to deny Sebastian Vettel a first Q3 appearance since Spa two months ago. Kimi Raikkonen earned his best qualifying performance of the year in 12th place and will start Sunday’s race from 10th on the grid - if he escapes a post-session investigation for a red flag rules infringement in Q1. George Russell qualified 13th but will go back five places because of a gearbox penalty. Russell and his Williams team-mate Nicholas Latifi will also face an investigation for queue-jumping in the pitlane as Q1 resumed after a red flag stoppage.
Antonio Giovinazzi spun on his final flying lap at the Turn 12 right-hander and ended up in 14th place, only ahead of the Alpine of Esteban Ocon (another penalty-hit driver) in Q2. The Haas duo of Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin, Latifi and Fernando Alonso joined Stroll in exiting qualifying in the first session. Alonso was 0.326 seconds slower than his Alpine team-mate Ocon, who took the final place in Q2, ensuring Alonso suffered his first Q1 exit since Monaco.
