Mexico City Grand Prix qualifying results: Lando Norris takes first place

Norris starts 14 points behind Piastri, so will regain the championship lead for the first time since April if he wins the race and Piastri is unable to make any progress.

Piastri struggled all weekend and although he appeared to have salvaged his qualifying with a final lap that briefly saw him move up to third, others knocked him down as they benefited from track improvement.

The Australian finished 0.588 seconds behind Norris’ pace, continuing his difficult path in recent races.

“Everything seems to be going well, just no pace,” Piastri said. “It’s a bit of a mystery. It’s been more or less the same gap all weekend. We’ll have to look at where things were going wrong at the time. It’s obviously a bit disappointing.

“This weekend and last weekend really. It just felt like the pace wasn’t coming. I’m not 100% sure why yet. We’ll do some digging.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella said: “There are a few things that need to be reviewed by Oscar. [It’s] It is more difficult for him to use the car when conditions are more slippery. “A bit like the conditions that were in Austin.”

Verstappen, who is within 40 points of Piastri after three wins and a second place in the past four races, was visibly struggling at Red Bull – on almost every lap he seemed to have an overshot in the middle of the Esses, a quick series of left-rights in the middle of the lap.

“We tried a lot of things, even in qualifying, and got a little wrong in some areas of the track,” he said.

“Just look at the plane [camera] And you see enough.

“All weekend we couldn’t control the car and that’s something we need to understand, when you have those problems you slide a lot and on this track you can’t handle that. The whole weekend was difficult.”