Carlos Sainz explains Lando Norris inspiration behind F1 pole lap

Carlos Sainz says he took inspiration from former F1 teammate Lando Norris on his way to pole position at the Mexico City Grand Prix.

The outgoing Ferrari driver stormed to his first pole of the season at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriquez after outpacing Red Bull’s Max Verstappen by 0.225 seconds in qualifying.

On his final lap of Q3, Sainz was seen taking an unusual line by hugging the pit wall as he exited the final corner - something he revealed is a tactic used by his former McLaren teammate Norris.

“It’s just a Lando thing that he normally likes to do,” Sainz explained. “I think it’s from iRacing or something.

“He likes doing short distance to the line and I said ‘well, I lose nothing by maybe if it’s faster, cutting a bit the distance, maybe it gives me a thousandth or two-thoustanth of a second, but I’m going to make sure I don’t leave them out thee’.

“I remember from our McLaren days he used to do it a lot and I was a bit puzzled.

“Tyre preparation has been a hot topic in Ferrari the last few races because we feel like come the race we are always very strong but we always lack something come qualifying.

“This year’s car is very good on tyres but I think sometimes that means in qualifying you cannot maybe extract the maximum out of the tyres in the first timed lap, in the soft tyres.

“We put a bit of focus on that in the three-week break and came into Austin and Mexico with a couple of things that seem to pay off.”

Sainz described the feeling of claiming his first pole position of the year as “very sweet” after nailing a lap that “very difficult” to put together.

“Very sweet, because it’s not normal to have to such strong laps around Mexico,” he said.

“There’s a lot of sliding in the lap, very difficult to put a lap together. My laps in Q3 were almost both perfect and very happy to be on pole and confirm the good form from Austin.

“Austin already, that last Q3 lap was coming good so I had high hopes coming to Mexico and we managed to keep it up.”

Sainz said he will do “everything I can” to keep hold of the lead on the long run down to Turn 1.

“The start I will just do everything I can to stay in P1, because also around Mexico that’s really important for the cooling of the cars, for the tyres, everything,” he said.

“I’ll do everything I can. But my focus is on the zero to 100, and on the launch, then everything from then onwards I depend also on how good my rivals start and all the instinctive decisions that we all take in the start.

“I’ll trust my instinct and obviously with the intention getting out of that corner P1 for sure.”