The first free practice session for the 2022 Mexican Grand Prix had given Ferrari good indications in view of qualifying, the result of which, however, did not confirm the expectations of the Maranello ream.
Not surprisingly, the starting grid will see Carlos Sainz begin the Mexican racebfrom fifth position, ahead of an excellent Valtteri Bottas and teammate Charles Leclerc, 7th and suffering from power unit issues in the final part of qualifying at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
An outcome that goes hand in hand with the power of the Ferrari power unit, reduced in order to protect the turbo given the high altitude and the thin air. In the fight for pole position, especially during Q3, Ferrari was therefore unable to battle for the front row either with Red Bull or with Mercedes, which was particularly strong on the Mexican track with both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, respectively in second and third place.
A Saturday which was summarized as following by the Sporting Director of the Maranello team, Laurent Mekies, who was also not satisfied with the results on Saturday afternoon in Mexico City:
“It was a tight qualifying today. This season, we’ve got used to being higher up the grid, but today we had to settle for 5th and 7th. It’s probably fair to say that we were not totally satisfied with the behaviour of our cars on this track, and that there are perhaps a few things we still need to crack around here to be more competitive.That being said, we think the potential is there. The gaps were relatively small and at some stage in Q2 it felt like we could be in the fight for better positions, but as it turned out we will start behind our competitors tomorrow.
It’s a long and tough race here, we have seen many cars struggling more than usual with a lot of sliding and it could be a race full of surprises with hopefully some opportunities for us to bring home plenty of points.” – he said
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“We focus tonight on trying to understand how to extract a bit more from the package we have here, and we will try our best to be in the fight tomorrow.” – Ferrari Racing Director Laurent Mekies explained, at the end of the qualifying session for the 2022 Formula 1 Mexico City Grand Prix.
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