Daniel Ricciardo revelled in taking his and AlphaTauri’s best qualifying result of 2023 after scoring a standout fourth position in Mexico City.
Ricciardo was competitive throughout the three-stage session at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez and stunned by scoring fourth place.
While Ricciardo was assisted in Q1 and Q2 by penalised team-mate Yuki Tsunoda providing a slipstream, Ricciardo was more competitive through the second and third sectors, and managed without a tow in Q3.
“Already kind of before the weekend I was feeling a little bit hungry, let’s say? In a positive way, like a chip on my shoulder,” he said.
![Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri [McLaren] celebrate their 1-2 finish at the 2025 F1 Austrian GP](https://www.motorsportweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Lando-Norris-Oscar-Piastri-McLaren-F1-2025-1-120x86.webp)
“And from Lap 1 yesterday, I felt good. Really all weekend I think we were a well inside the top 10 car. I think this morning, we were still there in P9. But obviously I was not happy with my lap this morning. I knew that we could show more than that.
“Q1, Q2, Yuki was great and gave us a tow just to make sure that we got into Q3. But then Q3, we didn’t have a tow and we still showed really good pace. Probably the coolest thing about today was it wasn’t ah OK, they did it but they gained a couple of tenths from a tow. We had raw pace.”
Ricciardo wound up only 0.216s away from pole-sitter Charles Leclerc.
“Obviously P4 is amazing,” he said. “But then when you look at pole, it was two-tenths, it’s not like Max [Verstappen] or someone was seven or eight-tenths down the road. So the gap is just as cool as the position, if you know what I mean.
“We’re really there, and who knows what it means for tomorrow? I don’t feel today is a fluke. I really feel like we had strong pace. I felt with a perfect lap, going through it in my head last night, I thought maybe today we could be P6, P7 if everything goes well. I definitely had confidence we weren’t just a P10 car. But P4 is pretty cool.”
![Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri [McLaren] celebrate their 1-2 finish at the 2025 F1 Austrian GP](https://www.motorsportweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Lando-Norris-Oscar-Piastri-McLaren-F1-2025-1-350x250.webp)
![Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri [McLaren] celebrate their 1-2 finish at the 2025 F1 Austrian GP](https://www.motorsportweek.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/Lando-Norris-Oscar-Piastri-McLaren-F1-2025-1-360x180.webp)
Awesome, Dan Man is back. Considering he is supposed in the “worst car on the grid”, to be that close to the times that the “best car on the grid” are doing, says a lot for the Honey Badger’s determination.
He might be a clown off the grid, but on the grid he’s got what it takes. Looks like a shirt change coming up for you next year Dan, I will be able to get mine out from the back of the wardrobe and wear it proudly.