Sainz on pole in Mexico City GP

Verstappen happy to be on the front row ahead of Norris

MEXICO CITY:

Ferrari's Carlos Sainz beat Formula One title contenders Max Verstappen and Lando Norris to pole position at the Mexico City Grand Prix on Saturday with a fastest lap he said was almost perfect.

Red Bull's championship leader Verstappen joined the Spaniard on the front row with McLaren's Norris, 57 points behind with five races remaining, qualifying third.

"Very happy to be on the front row, I honestly didn't think that would be possible," said Verstappen, who has won five of the last six races in Mexico.

The Dutch driver's first flying lap in the final shootout was deleted for exceeding track limits, leaving everything hanging on his final effort.

"Carlos and Max did good laps, especially Carlos has been very quick all weekend. I'm happy with third," said Norris, who could hope to use his car's speed to good effect on the long opening run from the start.

The pole was the sixth of Sainz's career and first in more than a year.

The Spaniard, who is leaving Ferrari for Williams at the end of the season and is out of the title reckoning, lapped with a best time of one minute 15.946 seconds.

"A lot of times around Mexico you always have the feeling like you cannot put a lap together and it's extremely difficult with how much sliding there is," he said. "But today honestly my two laps in Q3 (the final phase) were pretty much identical, almost perfect. I'll be just looking forward to keep that P1 into Turn One, and from there hopefully our race pace should be good enough to win it." Ferrari's Charles Leclerc, winner in Texas last weekend in a Ferrari one-two, will start in fourth place with the Mercedes pair of George Russell and Lewis Hamilton fifth and sixth respectively. Kevin Magnussen qualified seventh for Haas with Alpine's Pierre Gasly eighth and Alex Albon ninth for Williams.

Haas's Nico Hulkenberg completed the top 10 on the grid.

Red Bull's home favourite Sergio Perez continued his dire run of form with 18th place on the grid, his time nearly eight tenths of a second slower than Verstappen's best effort in the first phase.

"Every time I tried to brake I just put too much energy through the tyres and that makes it very tricky for me to stop the car," said Perez. "It's for the last three races where I cannot stop the car.

"I'm having to modulate quite a lot my braking and that's something we can see in the data but we are not able to fix it at the moment."

McLaren's Oscar Piastri, who had been fastest in final practice, was the other immediate shock with the young Australian only 17th while Norris sailed over the first hurdle with the quickest lap.

"It's a tricky circuit but I don't think today was down to it being tricky, I just made a very poor mistake and that was it," said Piastri. With Ferrari on the rise in the constructors' championship, only eight points behind Red Bull and a further 40 adrift of McLaren, Perez and Piastri's grid positions were a serious blow to their respective teams.

The second phase ended prematurely with 10 seconds remaining when Yuki Tsunoda crashed his RB in a desperate bid to get back in the top 10 after the two Haas drivers had pushed him down to 11th, with team mate Liam Lawson 12th. Two-times world champion Fernando Alonso qualified his Aston Martin 13th for what will be the 43-year-old Spaniard's record 400th race. Franco Colapinto, the Argentine rookie who has impressed for Williams, will line up 16th.