Ricciardo, of AlphaTauri, will start from fourth on the grid and has declared: “I feel a lot like my old self. I can do well.

“From lap one yesterday I felt really confident.

“P4 is maybe a little more than we thought, but coming into quali it wasn’t about getting Q3 but how far we could get inside.

“Definitely as a team we had confidence, but I thought maybe with a perfect lap it’s P6, P7, not a P4.”

Piastri qualified in seventh but is wary of car issues plaguing McLaren.

“It just didn’t really come together in Q3 and I don’t really know why,” Piastri said.

“I think that’s probably the most frustrating part at the moment.

“We’ll have a look and see what I could have done differently, whether we should have done something with the car, but yeah, just didn’t seem to find the step in pace that everyone else did.”

Piastri’s teammate Lando Norris had a shocker, qualifying 19th.

“I mean, it’s difficult to go backwards, I’ll be worried if I go backwards tomorrow,” Norris admitted.

“The pace is good, Oscar’s doing a good job. I probably should have gone P1 if I put my lap in before, but there’s a lot of ‘shoulda woulda coulda’ for me at the minute.

“Yeah, a shame, but points will be our target so we’ll see what we can do.”

Originally published as F1 live: News and rolling race updates from Mexico Formula One Grand Prix