28/10/2017
NEWS STORY
A perfectly executed last run by Sebastian secured him his fourth pole position this year, the fifth for Scuderia Ferrari in 2017. The fact that they are more or less equally spread along the season shows that the team has not lost its focus and it's determined to fight to the very end. Unfortunately, Kimi, did not manage to put together a perfect lap of the 4.3 Km Mexican track and ended up fifth best.
Sebastian Vettel: "Obviously I am really happy. I had a perfect lap in the end, even if the track here is difficult and very slippery. It is easy to make mistakes going over the limit here. But I thought to myself that if I could get T1 right, then I'd have a better chance. The last sector was also tricky because you know how easily you can go wide and lose a lot of time, but I managed to push and stay clean. So, I am really happy, especially because other cars were close and it's nice to hold everybody off. Yesterday the car was not where we wanted to be, but today everything was ok, and I think tomorrow we'll be quick enough. Let's see what happens at the start and after that we should have a good race. I know it's a long way to Turn 1, but overall I am confident because our starts are good. Last weekend it was tough for the whole team because it went through of a lot of work and a lot of changes. This weekend has been better, I think we deserved to get the result today and hope to have a great race tomorrow!"
Kimi Raikkonen: "It was a pretty difficult qualifying and the result is far from ideal. I struggled to put a decent lap together, I was lacking grip and made mistakes here and there. In some moments it felt good, in others not so, it was very easy to make a mistake. Every time I tried to push a bit more the front end seemed to lock up, especially in the last sector. In Q3 I only tried to get a lap time without any big issues, to be able to get somewhere, but I knew I was slow. Tomorrow is another day, I'm sure it will be better. It's hard to predict what will happen, but as long as we get a good feeling and the tires are working well we should be ok. Hopefully we'll make a good start and then see what happens in the straight and in the first corner. We'll try to stay out of trouble and be in a strong position after that".
Check out our Saturday gallery from Mexico, here.