Valtteri Bottas and Lewis Hamilton were surprised with their amazing Mexican GP front row lockout.
Mercedes were second-best throughout practice, but sprang a surprise on Red Bull when it mattered. Despite being six-tenths slower than their rivals, they showed them up during qualifying and finished first and second.
With both Red Bull drivers bottoming out and failing to better their times, the Finn took pole position, while the Englishman took second place. Bottas and Hamilton were left surprised with their Mexican GP front row starts, and attributed the success to the team.
“I definitely surprised myself,” Bottas said, as quoted by Formula Spy.
“And I think our performance as a team we seemed to be a little bit off, especially on a single lap, against Red Bull, so I would say yeah, the performance in Q3 was a bit of a surprise but it was a good lap.
“I think we managed to optimise the set-up since practice three this morning and also everything with the tyre temperatures, out laps, managed to get everything near perfection and that was the result, so obviously really rewarding.
“It’s quite a tricky track to put a good lap together,” the pole-sitter continued. “There are many technical sections and corner combinations, and running over the kerbs it’s so easy to lose five hundredths or even a tenth.
“So I think getting a nice clean lap together and I think getting the tyre temperatures in the optimal window was a big thing today and also the balance for us, definitely in qualifying, I had the best I’ve had this weekend.”
One for the team
Hamilton revealed that he raced on settings he didn’t like, but was happy to get the job doen for his team.
“It was small tweaks,” Hamilton said.
“To be honest I really struggled. I didn’t really like the set-up of the car today. It was good in P3 but I struggled with it in qualifying.
“I don’t really have an answer for it, but I’ll take it for sure and really grateful to be up there with Valtteri, for the team, to get a one-two,” he concluded.
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