As he lives up to the promise shown in previous sessions, Daniel Ricciardo insists that his qualifying pace was no fluke.

Based on the previous evidence, big things were expected from a number of drivers not to be usually found fighting at the front these days.

Alex Albon, Valtteri Bottas and Daniel Ricciardo had all shown serious promise in the previous sessions, and while the Williams driver ultimately failed to deliver, due to a lack of grip and track limits violations, both the Alfa Romeo driver and his AlphaTauri counterpart made it into Q3.

Indeed, Ricciardo will start fourth, ahead of Sergio Perez, Oscar Piastri and the Mercedes pair, and the Australian wants everyone to know that it was no fluke.

"It's cool," he replied, when asked how he felt after out-qualifying Perez at his home track. "I got asked, 'oh you're ahead of Checo tomorrow, how does that feel?', I mean, it feels cool, but I'm ahead of a lot of people.

"There's part of me which for the next hour wants to celebrate, because it's certainly a day that should be celebrated," he added. "I think the team as well, it's not often they qualify this far up the grid, especially this year.

"I'm just glad I got the most out of it. The next hour we'll enjoy, but then definitely focus on tomorrow and try to turn this into a bag of points."

Teammate, Yuki Tsunoda also looked strong, but a new engine and gearbox means he will start from the back of the grid. Nonetheless, the Japanese was able to assist his teammate by running with him and giving him a vital tow.

"From lap one yesterday I felt good, and really all weekend I felt we had a car to figure well inside the Top 10," said Ricciardo. "This morning we were still there... P9, but honestly, I was not happy with my lap this morning. I knew we could show more than that.

"You never know in qualifying because obviously everyone turns it up but I was confident in myself that I could definitely get some more tenths out of the car.

"In Q1 and Q2, Yuki was great, he gave me a tow just to obviously make sure we got into Q3, but then in Q3, I didn't have a tow and we still showed really good pace.

"I think that's probably the coolest thing about today, that it wasn't ‘Oh, okay, they did it, but he gained a couple of tenths from a tow'. We had raw pace, and actually the last lap when I crossed the line I was pretty angry because I didn't improve. I was up in the first sector and then we slowly lost it through the lap, so I kind of threw that one away.

"But by the sounds of it, no one really improved at the end with a second set of new softs so maybe the track kind of fell away, so that made me feel a little bit better.

"Obviously P4 is amazing," he grinned, "but then you see pole and it's two-tenths. It's not like Max or someone is seven or eight-tenths down the road. The gap is just as cool as the position. We're really there, and who knows what it means for tomorrow, but I don't think today's a fluke. I really felt like we had strong pace.

"With the perfect lap, I went through it in my head last night, and I thought maybe we could be a P6 or P7 if everything goes well. So I definitely had confidence that we weren't just a P10 car, but P4 is pretty cool."

Ironically, the Australian feels he first began to sense progress with the AlphaTauri at Zandvoort, the track where he crashed and injured his hand.

"We made some changes in Zandvoort for P2 - the session where we crashed - and those few laps I did, I remember on the hard tyre we were competitive and I actually felt alright, this is the direction we should start going with setup.

"But then with Austin last week, we didn't really have enough knowledge on it with only one practice session, so you kind of have to race what you bring.

"I was very excited to come into this weekend, try it and see what it felt like. I think with my driving style and where I'm at with the car, it was the direction that made me feel a little bit more confident. Already the car has been good to me, I felt good in it. This just made me lean on it a bit harder."

Check out our Saturday gallery from Mexico City here.