Gasly misses qualifying, gets further grid penalty

©Red Bull

Toro Rosso's Pierre Gasly was unable to take part in qualifying for the Mexican Grand Prix.

The Frenchman had already missed out on final practice. He was forced to park the car after a puff of smoke from his engine on his installation lap.

The team investigated the issue over lunch and found that the STR12 needed a new MGU-H fitted. Gasly initially joined the team members on the pit wall watching his team mate Brendon Hartly taking part in the session.

However he was called back to the garage and told to suit up in the hope that the engineers would complete the engine change in time to allow him to go out in Q1.

Red Bull's Verstappen dials in the speed in FP3

A few minutes later he was stood down again, as time ran out on the team's efforts to get the car track-ready.

Meanwhile Hartley made it through to Q2, only to then suffer a loss of power from his own Renault engine. It strongly suggests that there will more issues for the team to address overnight, and possibly grid penalties for Hartley as well.

Gasly had already incurred a five-place grid penalty for Sunday due to a change to his Control Electronics unit on Friday. The latest issue means he will be hit with a further 10 place drop.

As a result, Gasly will be starting at or near the back of the grid for the race. The two McLarens of Fernando Alonso and Stoffel Vandoorne also face hefty grid penalties this weekend.

Despite a near-brand new engine, Alonso reported a brief loss of power on his MCL32 in qualifying. However the car seemed to recover and Alonso later said that the car felt "great".

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.