Valtteri Bottas tops qualifying as Mercedes lock out the front row in Mexico

Mercedes have taken their first front-row lockout in more than a year, taking the upper hand in the battle with rivals Red Bull for the Mexico City Grand Prix.

Lewis Hamilton congratulates Valtteri Bottas in Mexico. (LAT Images/Mercedes)

Valtteri Bottas took pole with his first run in Q3, earning him a replica of Fangio's race helmet to celebrate seventy years since the Argentinean legend's first F1 World Championship.

"It was an awesome lap!" said Bottas.

"Especially my lap in the first run of Q3."

"I couldn't quite match my sectors in the second one, but I think honestly that first run in Q3 was one of my best laps."

"It's a good feeling!"

"Looking ahead to the start, it is a long, long straight and for sure, the cars behind with the tow will have good opportunities so we'll need a good start and at least, as a team, it's good that we have two cars ahead and hopefully we can try and keep the positions."

Valtteri Bottas set a storming early lap in Q3 which could not be beaten. (Jiri Krenek/Mercedes)

It was Bottas' 19th pole position, and the first time the team has locked out the front row of a Formula 1 grid since Hungary last year.

"Valtteri did an amazing job, I'm so proud of him!" said Lewis Hamilton, who qualified second.

"I think he's been driving so well these last few races so it's great for the team - they've been working hard."

"We didn't think we had the pace this weekend so to lock out the front row is pretty special and obviously gives us a good fight with the others tomorrow."

Hamilton had publicly commented on Friday that the team was down on speed compared to Red Bull.

"I'm not sure where we found the performance compared to Red Bull but once we got to qualifying we had good pace."

"I'm as shocked as everyone but we'll still take it!"

Championship leader Max Verstappen qualified third.

A moment of confusion as Yuki Tsunoda pulled out of the way saw teammate Sergio Perez drive off the track, with the dust cloud potentially impacting Verstappen's final lap.

Nonetheless, Bottas set his quickest time early in the session and it simply proved unbeatable for Red Bull.

“P3 isn’t so bad considering we were really struggling to get the tyres to work today – we were sliding around a lot," said Verstappen.

"My first lap in Q3 wasn’t great; the grip was terrible so when I saw the gap to Mercedes, I thought that was fair enough."

"We needed to find a better balance in the car, so we tried to make a few changes to how our car was running and then I think the second lap of Q3 was looking okay."

"I don’t know what happened in front of me, but I saw Checo and Yuki both go wide and I saw a lot of dust, so I thought that a car had crashed."

"I’ve been caught out by yellow flags here before, so I slowed down – as a result I lost a lot of momentum and time."

"It’s a shame that we both aren’t locking out the front row tomorrow after being so competitive all weekend."

"Tomorrow is a new day and hopefully the race will be exciting, there’s a long run to the first corner, so let’s see what happens.”