Ferrari’s Leclerc grabs surprise pole for Mexico Grand Prix

AFP |  Mexico City

The Daily Tribune – www.newsofbahrain.com

A surprised Charles Leclerc admitted he did not expect his success on Saturday after he secured pole position ahead of team-mate Carlos Sainz as Ferrari locked out the front row for yesterday’s Mexico Grand Prix.

In a chaotic and confusing qualifying session that seemed set to see Max Verstappen on pole again, Ferrari emerged in Q3 with a surge of pace that surprised almost everyone.

The Monegasque clocked a best lap in one minute and 17.166 seconds to beat the Spaniard by 0.067 seconds, leaving newly-crowned three-time world champion Verstappen third for Red Bull.

“It’s two weekends in a row where we say that we don’t know if we have the pace,” said Leclerc.

“People will start not believing us anymore! To be honest, I did not expect to be on pole today -- I thought we were lucky after FP3. “But once we put everything together it all went well.

The new tyres gained a lot, but I am already focusing on tomorrow’s race. We may have pole position, but now we need to convert it into a win and obviously it is going to be very difficult.”

Sainz admitted: “It was a strange one.

This whole weekend I’ve struggled to put a lap together then the first lap I put together in Q3 was P1 and suddenly Charles beat me by half a tenth, one tenth… “I’m just struggling to understand where we can find half a second -- and then we go half a second slower in the next lap.

It’s very tricky with the tyres. “The feeling with the car is very strange around this circuit, but we managed to put a good lap in when it counted,” he added.