Red Bull’s Max Verstappen ready for tough battle for pole at Mexican Grand Prix

MEXICO CITY – Max Verstappen is expecting a very competitive battle for pole position in Saturday’s qualifying session at the Mexican Grand Prix, after emerging on top of both practice sessions on Friday.

In deteriorating conditions in front of a boisterous and partisan crowd rooting for his Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez, Verstappen stayed ahead of nearest rival and friend Lando Norris of McLaren by 0.119 of a second.

His determined performance in the second session came after beating Williams’ Alexander Albon by 0.095sec in the first.

“It’s going to be incredibly competitive over one lap. But the race is a different story... There are always a few things to improve but, overall, it is a positive start for the weekend and probably better than I expected,” said the newly crowned three-time world champion.

“So that’s always good. The track is very slippery, like it always is here and, in the long run, the tyres are very difficult to manage as well. So there are a lot of things that we can work on.”

The 26-year-old Dutchman wrapped up his third title in Qatar earlier in October and has won 15 of the 18 races this season. He completed

50 career victories last Sunday at the United States GP.

The pressure has now shifted to Perez, who is seeking his first podium finish in five races at his home Mexican GP. It is a race he has never won, but he has been suffering a run of poor form as he battles to finish second overall.

Potentially playing on that stress is Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton after he said Red Bull are not being fully supportive of Perez, who is now 39 points ahead of the Briton with four rounds remaining. Red Bull have never ended a season with their drivers first and second.

“I don’t think his team has been really massively supportive. Not all his team, because there’s a lot of people on a team, but a couple – one of them particularly, a spokesperson, has not been really great, not helping psychologically,” the seven-time world champion told Fox Sports television.

“If I heard (Mercedes boss) Toto (Wolff) talking negatively about me over the weekend that would’ve been really tough. So it’s a difficult environment for him (Perez), but he has dealt with it to the best of his ability.”

Hamilton did not name any individual, but Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko – a prominent figure in the team’s leadership – was given a written warning by the governing FIA in September for comments he made about Perez.

The 80-year-old Austrian had blamed Perez’s patchy form on his ethnicity, and also referred to him as a South American.

Perez started the season by taking the fight to Verstappen, each winning two races in the first four, but his challenge then collapsed and the Dutchman ran away with 10 wins in a row.

Speaking on Friday, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said Perez had been working hard behind the scenes with his engineers to get himself “on the front foot in these remaining races”.

“He had a strong start today and a good race just a week ago in Austin, and hopefully he can build on that confidence and that performance,” said Horner, who was also quick to shoot down any talk of rivalry between his drivers.

“There is no rivalry between the two drivers. They actually get on very well, they’ve got on very well for three years.

“Whilst I’m sure the media would love them to be at each others’ throats, unfortunately for you guys they aren’t.

“They work very well together off track and on track as we’ve seen on many occasions.”

The Mexican GP also featured a record-setting drive, after Oliver Bearman became the youngest Briton to take part in a Formula One GP when he made his practice debut on Friday, aged 18.

The Ferrari-backed Formula Two driver took over race regular Kevin Magnussen’s Ferrari-powered Haas car for the hour-long session at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, as part of a requirement for teams to give rookies track time.

The team’s trackside engineering director Ayao Komatsu said Bearman had exceeded expectations.

“Not that my expectation was low, but that was so professional and he didn’t put a foot wrong. The communication and the feedback were really good as well. So really, I’ve got nothing to complain about. It was a really impressive FP1,” he said.

Bearman will also take part in practice in the season-ending Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in November.

“My first goal was to have a clean session and we did that, so that was the main thing. Secondly, I got up to speed quite fast, I had confidence in the car... I’ll do better the second time but, for my first FP1, I’m happy,” he said.

The previous youngest Briton to take part in a practice session was McLaren’s Norris at the 2018 Belgian GP when he was also 18.
AFP, REUTERS