Lewis Hamilton secured his first pole position as a Ferrari driver at the Mexico City Grand Prix, the 105th of his career and his first since 2023. The 41-year-old's lap also made him the oldest driver to take pole in Formula One since Mario Andretti in 1982, a gap of 44 years that matches Hamilton's racing number.
A difficult weekend turned around
Hamilton's path to pole was not straightforward. He sacrificed first practice to experiment and test his car, then lost half of the second practice session to an engine problem. Neither Ferrari topped the times in FP3, but Hamilton delivered in Q3.
"Wow, that felt great," he said, adding that he was "lost for words" before explaining the challenges he faced.
"It's been a really tough, challenging weekend. In FP1 we had the rake running and then we had the engine issue in FP2, which put us on the back foot and meant we weren't able to do a long run," Hamilton said. "But we did a good job with the setup over the weekend, we've learned a lot from the last race. It's so close between us all... Wow, to have pole here, I don't know if I've had a pole here before. It's my first pole with Ferrari and 105, I like that number."
Mental strength and continued learning
Hamilton has previously said he has to work harder than most to keep his body in shape at his age, but he emphasised that mental strength is equally valuable to him at this stage of his career.
"When there's a will, there's a way. It's all in the mind, honestly, for all of us. We all have our aches and pains, I ice bath a lot, I do lots of different things that you can do to keep yourself young and fit," Hamilton said. "But I love what I do and that love has not gone – I wake up every day thinking about it, I dream about it. I've got this amazing support around the world and these guys keep me going, so I hope they're happy with that today and that I can do it again tomorrow."
Hamilton's pole came after team-mate Charles Leclerc spoke about how much he continues to learn from the Briton. "With Lewis, 100 percent I think, to push each other every weekend, there are some weekends where he's just incredibly quick and I learn a huge amount," Leclerc said. "When I'm doing a good job, I still learn a huge amount from Lewis in just looking at the data and trying to understand the way he works and the way he just dealt with the car, because he's incredibly good at it."
Leclerc added: "There's always something to take after each weekend. I've got my notebook with a lot of notes and probably more notes than ever since Lewis joined the team."
