Carlos Sainz Jnr mentioned the weird line he took on the finish of his pole place lap was one he realized from former workforce mate Lando Norris.
The Ferrari driver averted the traditional racing line as he completed his flying laps immediately, protecting a fractionally shorter distance to the timing line.
Sainz believes Norris developed the method in driving simulator iRacing. He mentioned he realized it from his rival when the pair had been workforce mates at McLaren in 2019 and 2020.
“It’s only a Lando factor that he usually likes to do,” mentioned Sainz. “I believe it’s from iRacing or one thing. He likes doing a brief distance to the road and I mentioned 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 go away them on the market.
“I bear in mind from our McLaren days he used to do it quite a bit and I used to be a bit puzzled.”
The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez will not be an official-licensed circuit for iRacing. Nevertheless the identical method has been utilized by some drivers at different tracks with related last corners.
Sainz beat Max Verstappen to pole place by two-tenths of a second, so the weird line was not decisive. The pole winner mentioned getting the tyre temperatures good had been key.
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“Tyre preparation has been a sizzling subject in Ferrari the previous couple of 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 12 months’s automotive is superb on tyres, however I believe that generally it signifies that in quali you can not possibly extract the utmost out of the tyres within the first timed lap on the smooth tyres.
“I put a little bit of concentrate on that through 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 mentioned the end result was “very candy.”
“It’s not regular to have such two sturdy laps round Mexico. There’s lots of sliding within the lap, very troublesome to place a lap collectively, and really my two laps of Q3 had been virtually each good.
“I’m very joyful to be on pole and to substantiate the nice type 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.”
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2024 Mexican Grand Prix
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