Carlos Sainz Jnr stated the weird line he took on the finish of his pole place lap was one he discovered from former crew mate Lando Norris.
The Ferrari driver averted the traditional racing line as he completed his flying laps at the moment, masking a fractionally shorter distance to the timing line.
Sainz believes Norris developed the approach in driving simulator iRacing. He stated he discovered it from his rival when the pair had been crew mates at McLaren in 2019 and 2020.
“It’s only a Lando factor that he usually likes to do,” stated Sainz. “I believe it’s from iRacing or one thing. He likes doing a brief distance to the road and I stated effectively, I lose nothing, possibly if it’s sooner slicing a bit the gap, possibly it provides me a thousand or two thousandths of a second, I’m going to verify this time I don’t depart them on the market.
“I keep in mind from our McLaren days he used to do it rather a lot and I used to be a bit puzzled.”
The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez will not be an official-licensed circuit for iRacing. Nonetheless the identical approach has been utilized by some drivers at different tracks with comparable remaining corners.
Sainz beat Max Verstappen to pole place by two-tenths of a second, so the weird line was not decisive. The pole winner stated getting the tyre temperatures excellent had been key.
Advert | Develop into a RaceFans supporter and
“Tyre preparation has been a sizzling subject in Ferrari the previous few races as a result of we really feel like within the race we’re all the time very sturdy, however we appear to lack one thing come qualifying. This yr’s automobile is excellent on tyres, however I believe that generally it signifies that in quali you can’t possibly extract the utmost out of the tyres within the first timed lap on the mushy tyres.
“I put a little bit of concentrate on that throughout the three-week break and got here into Austin and Mexico with a few issues that appeared to repay.”
Each of Sainz’s laps in Q3 had been fast sufficient for pole place. He stated the outcome was “very candy.”
“It’s not regular to have such two sturdy laps round Mexico. There’s plenty of sliding within the lap, very troublesome to place a lap collectively, and truly my two laps of Q3 had been nearly each excellent.
“I’m very comfortable to be on pole and to substantiate the great kind from Austin. In Austin already that final lap of Q3 was coming good [before he encountered yellow flags]. So I had excessive hopes coming into Mexico and we’ve managed to stick with it.”
Miss nothing from RaceFans
Get a day by day e mail with all our newest tales – and nothing else. No advertising, no adverts. Join right here:
Advert | Develop into a RaceFans supporter and
