McLaren Mexican Grand Prix qualifying podium miss, Digi Mart USA News (Mexico): The Mexican Grand Prix left McLaren with the feeling that it had lost a clear opportunity. The pace of the MCL38 pointed toward a podium, but a poor qualifying session condemned Lando Norris to racing in dirty air and Oscar Piastri to fighting back from the back of the field.
Team principal Stella pointed to the difficulty of overtaking at altitude and to the penalty given to Piastri for contact with Lindblad as factors that limited the final result.
The altitude of the Mexican circuit reduces air density, which penalizes cooling and aerodynamic downforce, causing the car to lose grip and struggle under braking. McLaren worked with a setup aimed at protecting the tires, but that configuration did not allow the team to extract its full pace on the fast lap.
The result was a car that was competitive in the race but limited in qualifying, where every tenth of a second matters for avoiding traffic and dirty air from rivals.
McLaren has seemingly turned Saturday into a habit: it sits down to the table with Sunday’s pace and ends up picking at crumbs in qualifying. While Red Bull collects points with the calm of a team that has seen this film before, at Woking the team is repeating the script of recovering from behind.
McLaren’s third place in the championship is 17 points back, and upgrades for Brazil look promising, but unless Saturday is corrected, Sunday will remain an uphill climb.
