Mexican Grand Prix qualifying was very good for one of the three 2025 Formula 1 title contenders but pretty worrying for the other two.
All three feature in our winners and losers selection.
Loser: Oscar Piastri (8th)
The perplexity came through incredibly clear as Oscar Piastri gamely fielded questions after qualifying eighth and finding himself almost six tenths of a second slower than McLaren team-mate Lando Norris.
He called his lack of pace a “mystery”, said it was surprising to remain so far adrift throughout the weekend instead of making progress, and that “one of the cars is quick so we need to try and work out why I’m not”.
There was no hint of foul play from Piastri or suggestion that he’s carrying some hidden damage from the rebuild of his car after last weekend’s sprint race crash. He doesn’t know for sure, but as he put it, “everything feels normal”.
To Piastri’s credit, he wore the frustration and the confusion well. His priority is rightly on trying to get to the bottom of this struggle rather than get annoyed at being asked questions about it – but his immediate focus will be on what damage limitation is possible on Sunday. – Scott Mitchell-Malm
Winner: Lando Norris (1st)
No poles since Belgium in July and no wins since Hungary a week later. He’d been nibbling away at Piastri’s points lead, but not in a particularly intimidating way and not with the same momentum with which Max Verstappen was charging up on both of them.
Norris was starting to feel like the longest shot of the three title contenders, regardless of his points situation. It had just seemed too long since he’d simply been faster than everyone else or done anything that screamed ‘I am the driver to beat’.
That changed when he suddenly blitzed what had been an ultra-close field in the final runs of practice three in Mexico, and it carried through qualifying.
The nature of the run to Turn 1 means this isn’t the easiest race to win from pole, but right now Norris’s title bid looks healthier than it did 48 hours ago. – Matt Beer
Loser: Max Verstappen (5th)
Verstappen reckons every lap he’s driven around this circuit so far this weekend has been rubbish, and is clearly bracing himself for a difficult race too.
Although he was quickest on Friday, the set-up required to unlock that pace came at a cost to crucial long-run pace. Corrective action on Saturday seems to have failed, with Verstappen reverting on the larger rear wing tried in FP3 and feeling like the car won’t work for him over one lap or on longer runs either.
With Norris on pole this is a bad time for Red Bull to slump. Things are so bad that Verstappen reckons he’ll make zero progress in the race unless “cars retire in front of me”. – Ben Anderson
Winner: Ferrari (2nd + 3rd)
Team boss Fred Vasseur called it Ferrari’s best qualifying session of the season, which seems like a fair assessment.
Lewis Hamilton was in the top three throughout, suggesting the car was consistently strong even as the track grip changed.
Charles Leclerc came alive in Q3 and briefly looked like he might have a shot at pole. There wasn’t much to choose between his final lap and Norris’s, but a slightly better line through Turns 2/3 and the McLaren driver’s superior confidence in carrying speed through the Esses seemed to make the difference.
Even so, a great result and performance from Leclerc, Hamilton and Ferrari. – BA
Loser: Yuki Tsunoda (11th)
This is the last race in the judgement period before Red Bull is expected to decide its 2026 driver line-up. Yuki Tsunoda wasn’t horrendously far off Verstappen (0.211s in Q2) and very close (0.016s) to making Q3. If Red Bull’s race pace is as bad as Verstappen feels it is, then a lacklustre second driver isn’t its biggest problem this weekend. Tsunoda’s had worse days than this.
But he’s still not having any conspicuously better ones and time has run out. It won’t go unnoticed by Red Bull that the driver keeping Tsunoda out of Q3 was Isack Hadjar. – MB
Winner: Carlos Sainz (7th)
There’s an undeniable body of evidence now that Carlos Sainz is properly on top of this Williams package, and a bullishness to his tone.
Sainz said after beating Piastri and qualifying half a tenth off Kimi Antonelli (who Sainz felt was beatable) that he was “feeling more and more at home with the car every session that I do; knowing where to go with set-up, with tyres” – so it was little surprise he also felt this was “one of my best qualifyings of the year, if not my best Q3 lap probably of the year”.
There is the caveat: the five-place grid penalty carried over from last weekend’s US GP that is going to make life harder for him on Sunday from 12th on the grid.
Still, Sainz is right to “focus on the positives”: he probably is, as he claimed, “the fastest midfield car” here, and that’s now five times in six weekends that Sainz has outqualified team-mate Alex Albon. That’s no fluke. – Jack Cozens
Loser: Alex Albon (17th)
This is a bit of a testing time for Albon, so clearly the star of the midfield in the first half of the season.
Though there are asterisks next to each of them, three Q1 exits in four races and five qualifying defeats to your team-mate in six is enough of a pattern to suggest there’s a bit more than circumstance at play right now. Albon conceded as much after qualifying 17th in Mexico, saying he’s “dropped into a bit of a tricky spot with the car”.
The good part? He’s not hiding from it in any way. The bad part? He’s at a loss to explain it. “It’s pure pace and I don’t know where it’s coming from. It is a bit confusing.” – JC
Winner: Mercedes (4th + 6th)
Another episode of Mercedes being under-the-radar decent without doing anything hugely headline-worthy.
Though it starts behind both Ferraris, it’s Mercedes (George Russell in particular) who you’d bank on to make things work over a race distance right now. So while if qualifying positions are maintained it’s bad news for Mercedes in the tight battle for second in the constructors’, the picture may well look very different at the end of the race.
Antonelli had plenty of off-track adventures in practice and confessed to his Q1 being “terrible” and his overall performance quite “scrappy”, but around that he’s quick enough this weekend that he’s still only 0.084s and two places behind Russell on the grid.
Mercedes certainly doesn’t look like it will be brushed aside by the out of position title contenders in the race, and could do Norris a big favour. – MB
Loser: Alpine (18th + 20th)
“This track I think is just not very good for us at the minute.”
That comment from Franco Colapinto seems fair enough. The trouble for Alpine right now is any track is just not very good for it at the minute.
Everything’s relative in F1, and both drivers were less than a second off the pace in Q1. For 18th-place qualifier Pierre Gasly, the gap to Q2 was just 0.134s – a margin he felt he had in the car…if he could extract it.
“With the balance that we have and the grip we have, to just put every corner together is nearly impossible,” said Gasly.
“I’m sure there is a tenth in there. But to be fair, it’s probably the hardest sort of car balance inconsistency we’ve had this year.”
He struggled with front and rear brake locking, particularly so at Turn 4, while Colapinto felt the biggest difficulty was on the kerbs – “anytime I touch a kerb the car bounces a lot and it’s very stiff”. All in all, another disappointing Saturday for a team that has little left to fight for in 2025 other than keeping up morale. – JC
