Hamilton snatches record 105th pole for Ferrari with 0.009s edge over Russell in Mexico

Lewis Hamilton secured his first pole position for Ferrari at the Mexico Grand Prix on Saturday, beating former Mercedes team-mate George Russell by a razor-thin 0.009 seconds at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. The result extends Hamilton’s own all-time record to 105 career poles and ends a drought stretching back to the 2023 Hungarian Grand Prix, his final pole in Mercedes colours.

Hamilton attributed the breakthrough to a deliberate change in his approach to the weekend. Arriving at the circuit on Wednesday — something he described as highly unusual — he and the team reviewed recent races to identify where performance had been slipping away.

“I came here on Wednesday, which I never ever do,” Hamilton said. “We really wanted to look at where we’ve been the last few races, where it’s kind of gone wrong, where we can improve. We made a slight tweak to how we worked this weekend. I really felt all weekend that we had the possibility of competing at the front.”

The pole carries particular emotional weight for the seven-time world champion. “To get the pole, finally get a pole with Ferrari, it just takes me back to when I was a kid sitting on the sofa watching Michael [Schumacher] get those poles and thinking how cool would that be to do that,” he said.

A key factor was understanding tyre behaviour in Mexico’s demanding conditions. The circuit’s high altitude, low-grip surface and significant track temperature swings across a session create a narrow operating window for the compounds — a problem that has repeatedly caught Ferrari out this season.

The issue was starkly illustrated the previous weekend in Austin, where Ferrari topped all three practice sessions before qualifying only fourth and fifth. Charles Leclerc, who starts Sunday’s race from third, attributed that collapse to tyre overheating triggered by a temperature drop — precisely the variable Hamilton said his team spent Saturday scrutinising.

“Wind direction, tyres, track temperature dropping through the session, and what that means to settings that you need to get the tyres working,” Hamilton explained. “You see us all go out and it looks like we’re doing okay, but the tyres operate in a very small window where they’re good, and then they overheat.”

Hamilton added that he had sensed the pace was there throughout qualifying but that previous weekends had seen that potential evaporate by Q3. On Saturday, the preparation paid off at the critical moment.