How Lando Norris showed Carlos Sainz Jr. the roadmap to pole position in Mexico City

When the lights go out later today in the Formula 1 Mexico City Grand Prix, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jr. will roll off the line in P1, having captured pole position in a thrilling qualifying session.

He might have the driver behind him in P3 to thank for it.

That driver? Lando Norris, his former teammate at McLaren.

During Sainz’s qualifying runs on Saturday, the Ferrari driver took an unorthodox line out of Turn 17 back to the start/finish line, hugging the inside wall at the exit of Turn 17. While Alex Jacques and Jolyon Palmer noted during the F1TV broadcast that the uncommon racing line was hardly used — evidenced by the spray of dust Sainz left in his wake — the results spoke for themselves, as Sainz took pole position.

In the FIA Press Conference Sainz was asked about that unique path back to the line out of Turn 17, and credited Norris and his “iRacing” days as the inspiration.

“No, it’s just a Lando thing that he normally likes to do,” began Sainz. “I think it’s from iRacing or something. He likes doing short distance to the line. And I said, well, I lose nothing by, maybe if it’s faster, maybe cutting a bit the distance. Maybe it gives me a thousand or two-thousandths of a second that I’m going to make sure this time I don’t leave them out there. And yeah, I remember from our McLaren days he used to do it a lot and I was a bit puzzled.”

Telemetry data from F1-Tempo supports Sainz’s unorthodox approach. If you look at his fastest lap in Q3, and compare it to the lap from Max Verstappen, which was good for second, Sainz was quicker coming out of Turn 17 and back to the start/finish line:

Sainz may have been puzzled then, but he was not puzzled on Saturday in Mexico City.

We’ll see if he needs that unique racing at any point in the main event Sunday.