Lewis Hamilton seldom talks about the machinery. After taking pole position for the Mexico City Grand Prix on 1 November, the seven-time world champion did something that cut against that habit: he named a specific regulation change as the thing holding him back since 2022.

“That’s been something I’ve really struggled with, I would say, probably the last few years, particularly as we went to the 18-inch tyre,” Hamilton said at the post-qualifying press conference in Mexico, as Autosport reported.

Hamilton drove the previous 13-inch tires for 15 seasons. Every grand prix since 2022 has been on the larger specification, and the record over that stretch was meager by his standards. The Mexico lap was his first regular grand prix pole since Hungary 2023, a wait of 1,197 days, according to Al Jazeera.

A very small window before they overheat

Hamilton framed the problem in operational terms. The 18-inch tire works only inside a narrow range of temperature and load, and once the rubber slips past that range, the lap is lost.

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“The tyres operate in a very small window where they’re good, and then they overheat,” he told the same press conference.

He also said he had arrived in Mexico on the Wednesday of race week, which is not his normal routine, to go back through what had been going wrong in recent rounds. The reset extended to the driving itself: a different balance usage, different corner approaches, and, by his own account, tools he had not reached for in about 13 years.

0.009 seconds, and the oldest polesitter since 1982

The Mexico lap was Hamilton’s 105th career pole position, extending his all-time record. George Russell was second in the Mercedes, 0.009 seconds behind. Charles Leclerc was third for Ferrari, 0.119 seconds off his teammate.

At 41, Hamilton became the oldest driver to start a grand prix from pole since Mario Andretti at Monza in 1982. The pole did not become a win: Max Verstappen took the race at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, with Hamilton second. Kimi Antonelli clinched the 2026 drivers’ title on the same afternoon.

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Qualifying for the next round, the São Paulo Grand Prix at Interlagos, is on Saturday, 7 November.

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