The prancing horses, lead but Charles Leclerc, came out of nowhere in Mexico to take an astounding one-two, as Max Verstappen was inches away from the two of them in third.
Qualifying One
It took the drivers a while to cruel out of the pitlane in Mexico, but it was certainly interesting when they did as Lewis Hamilton and George Russel chose the medium set of tyres.
They wouldn’t be the only ones as both Ferraris and both McLarens also went for the medium set of tyres.
Aston Martin seemed to be worried about making it into Q2 as the Silverstone-based squad performed a race-style pit stop with both drivers to put new sets of soft tyres on.
Logan Sargent had a bit of pressure on him as the American lost his first flying lap after skipping across turn 12, which the driver who scored points last time out, worried may have damaged the floor of the Williams.
Lando Norris had left it until the last minutes of the session to set his first flying lap, which then was extremely disappointing as too much kerb, in turn nine flicked out the rear end of the McLaren, which left him with a lap only good enough for 19th.
Fernando Alonso then put Lando Norris’s session to bed as the Spaniard did a full 180 at turn 3 bringing out yellows ruining many of the grid’s final runs.
So out in Q1 was Ocon in 16th, Magnussenin 17th, Stroll 18th, Norris 19th, and Sargent in 20th with the Williams and McLaren expected to be much further up the field.
Sargent after the session was handed a ten-place gird penalty for overtaking Tsunoda under yellows, which didn’t affect the American’s grid position, but put him up to six penalty points.
Qualifying Two
After the first flying runs in this session Alex Albon said the Williams felt like “a totally different car” as he sat just below the cut-off in eleventh +0.418s from safety.
Next was Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly who both had six tenths to find in the session, with Alonso with over nine tenths to find.
Tsunoda hadn’t set a time yet, but if his teammate in third was anything to go by, the Japanese driver should be making Q3.
Sainz was under pressure in ninth at the end of the session with the Ferrari driver +0.811s off pole and at risk in the final stages of Q2
The Singapore winner held on by the skin of his teeth as he finished just above the safe line in tenth position.
Zhou Guanyu thought it was all over as he finished the session in eleventh, but Alex Albon had cut turn two with all four tyres just going over the white line.
This dropped the Thai driver to 14th, as Pierre Gasly joined him in 11th, Hulkenberg in 12th, Alonso in 14th, and Tsunoda without a time in 15th.
Qualifying Three.
Ferrari had pulled an absolute blinder on everyone as they put both cars on the front row after the first flying run, with Sainz leading Leclerc by +0.067s.
The next closest was Max Verstappen who himself was +0.120s back from Sainz setting up an extremely exciting final couple of minutes in the session.
Both Mercedes had fallen back after being predicted to be the ones to take the fight to Red Bull, as both drivers were over half a second behind Sainz in fifth and sixth.
The person between them and Verstappen was Daniel Riccardo who had set a very impressive lap time, which saw the Aussie only +0.216s from pole.
On the final flying laps, it looked like Max Verstappen was heading towards snatching P1 from Leclerc as he was the only car on track improving with a purple second sector, but he only finished third.
So the top ten looked like this:
Ferrari locked out the front row in Mexico, in a performance which truly came from nowhere, with Verstappen closing the gap to +0.097s in third position.
Daniel Riccardo has definitely rediscovered his form here as he held onto fourth position for tomorrow’s race for Alpha Tauri.
Perez was unable to use the momentum from the home weekend crowd to propel him to pole as he finished the session in fifth +0.257s from the top spot.
The Mercedes were sixth and eighth, with Hamilton the faster of the two as he was just +0.288s from pole, but Russell was +0.508s back.
The sole McLaren of Piastri was in seventh +0.457s back in a disappointing session for them.
Then in ninth and tenth were Bottas and Zhou who both were over eight-tenths off.