Charles Leclerc might have missed out when it came to the drivers championship this year, but the Ferrari driver has certainly been consistently the star of qualifying with nine pole positions to his name in 2022.
That was why it was so strange to see him looking uncharacteristically off the pace at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez on Saturday, in which he struggled to secure seventh place on the grid for the Mexican Grand Prix.
Afterwards, Leclerc suggested that his F1-75 might be suffering from an engine issue of some sort, which the team will investigate overnight in time for the start of Sunday's race.
"We need to look at it," he told Sky Sports F1 after the end of today's session. "I've been losing quite a lot of time down the straights in qualifying. FP3 was not great either, so we need to look into it.
"We had loads of problems with the engine today for some reason," he added. "There were loads of problems with drivability. The throttle was not really - I mean, the engine was not responding to the throttle input I was giving.
"I had very bad drivability in all the high-speed corners," he noted. "Then down the straights, we were so slow. We need to look into it."
While Leclerc was unsure what might be behind it, he ruled out the high altitude of the venue. It was also unclear whether the problem might be connected to his accident during FP2, which had been repurposed as a tyre test for Pirelli.
But after completing just 13 laps in the extended 90 minute session, Leclerc lost the rear of the car going into turn 8 and spun off, hitting the rear of the car in a hard knock against the barriers.
Ferrari checked the car overnight and didn't find any major damage requiring changes to the power unit or the gearbox. However it could still be an underlying factor in Saturday's problems.
"I don't really know," he conceded. “I think this is really a one-off. For me it was really strange. We need to look into it and I hope we can find something for tomorrow.
"For now I need to speak with the team to see what we can do for tomorrow. Obviously we cannot change much so I'm not sure what we can do.
"I really hope we can fix that for tomorrow. If yes, I feel confident we can have a good result. If not I’m not sure how it will go.
Today's poor qualifying session means Leclerc will have his hands full in the race trying to recover from P7. And his team mate Carlos Sainz also underperformed, finishing in P5.
“It was a fight, a clear fight out there," Sainz said. "I think you could see it from the outside. I don’t know if we haven’t nailed the set-up, or we just got it wrong with tyres, or the altitude is just affecting us a bit too much.
"It’s clear the car over one lap hasn’t been as competitive as it has been in other Grands Prix," he admitted. "For me, it was more the unpredictability of our car more than anything else.
"When the car is so tricky, putting a good lap together in quali is always tricky," he added. "Now we need to focus clearly on putting a good race together knowing that this weekend we might not be the fastest."
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