McLaren’s title race leader struggles to eighth fastest
Champion Max Verstappen qualifies in fifth
Lando Norris claimed pole position for the Mexican Grand Prix, with a mighty lap for McLaren at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. The Briton left his title rivals in his wake and in so doing earned a chance to make a major impact on the championship standings and potentially retake the lead.
Enjoying a huge boost to his world championship ambitions, Norris delivered an immense lap, perhaps his best of the season in qualifying, to beat the Ferraris of Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton into second and third place. However of real import was that fellow title protagonists Max Verstappen and Norris’s McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri could manage only fifth and eighth place respectively.
The pole was a real statement of intent from Norris and McLaren and exactly the riposte they required after the recent momentum Verstappen has gathered as he closed the gap to the leaders.
