Daniel Ricciardo "a haircut" behind Carlos Sainz in Mexico qualifying

Daniel Ricciardo has endured a "bittersweet" qualifying session to start the Mexico City Grand Prix from seventh on the grid.

Daniel Ricciardo was just two milliseconds behind Carlos Sainz. (Motorsport Images/McLaren)

"Ugh these small gaps… that's on me," said Ricciardo over team radio.

His McLaren team reassured him that he was just "a haircut" off Ferrari's Carlos Sainz.

"20 milliseconds off purple in Sector 1," said engineer Tom Stallard.

"It’s a little bittersweet," said Ricciardo after the session, "because obviously Carlos is two-milliseconds in front, but to split the Ferraris is not too bad around here."

"We worked as a team well, with Lando giving me some help."

The Australian was given preference in qualifying, with teammate Lando Norris starting from the rear of the grid due to a power unit penalty.

"Today was all about teamwork," said Team Principal Andreas Seidl.

"With Lando taking his fourth power unit of the season and going to the back of the grid, the challenge was to get Daniel as high up as possible, with Lando’s help."

"The team and the drivers developed a programme to do that and executed it very well this afternoon. We’ve achieved pretty much everything we wanted to achieve today."

Ricciardo will start on the third row next to rival Sainz.

"I think the clean side of the grid should be OK tomorrow," he said.

"I made a little mistake in Turn 13 which I think cost me sixth but the clean side of the grid isn’t a bad offset, so we’ll work with that."

 "We did make improvements going into today, yesterday was tricky as we missed a lot of running."

"We hit the ground running and I think we have to be fairly pleased with P7."

"We’ll try to get a couple off the start tomorrow.”