Race Report: Max wins Mexican GP

The F1 Mexican Grand Prix race was won by Red Bull’s Max Verstappen breaking his own record of 15 wins in a season. The race may have seemed like standard operating procedure but it wasn’t without its drama and oddities.

Win

A win for Red Bull and Max Verstappen who did a marvelous job of converting their long-run race pace on Hard compounds into a dominant win. The 16th win in a season for Max Verstappen.

A win for Mercedes who have toiled day and night to get Lewis Hamilton a car that can fight for second in both driver’s and constructor’s championships. Lewis had a very good run to P2 and like Austin, he seems highly motivated and energized.

Ok, it wasn’t converting their P1 and P2 starting positions into P1 and P2 finishing positions but still, it was a decent race for Ferrari with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz finishing P3 and P4 respectively. The downside is, a Mercedes is finishing ahead of them.

A big win for McLaren’s Lando Norris who started at the back and despite his strategy being spoiled by a red flag, passed his way up to P5 is a very inspired drive! A great result of Lando and the team.

A big win for Daniel Ricciardo who qualified well and raced well to finish in P7 which the team desperately needed. Dan’s result moves Alpha Tauri ahead of Haas in the constructors championship. It’s a race worth $20 million in prize money!

A win for Alex Albon who climbed into the points for Williams F1 and that’s a good result given where he qualified.

Fail

Not sure what was going on with Sergio Perez as a veteran, such as he is, would know that three into 1 doesn’t work. It was a case of trying to win the race at the first turn. It’s all good to suggest you see a gap and go for it but not if there is a high possibility of colliding with the two cars to your right. Very shocked he tried that move.

A fail for Yuki Tsunoda as this could have been the best result for Alpha Tauri all year with both cars in the points but his lunge at Oscar Piastri was a bad mistake as he dropped out of the points. This is why I would have kept Liam if I’m honest. Daniel didn’t make the same mistake trying to force a pass around George Russell late in the race. The team needed those points!

A fail for Aston Martin as they have seemingly moved in the opposite direction their upgrades were intended to move. Such a tough weekend and Lance Stroll getting mugged by Valtteri Bottas ensured a dual DNF.

WTH

At the time of writing this, I am not sure what broke on Kevin Magnussen’s car but that was a nasty crash. Hope Kevin is ok.

Not sure I completely understand Ferrari’s strategy with Carlos Sainz. Feel like they could have done something different to prevent Hamilton passing him.

The crowd booing Charles Leclerc was unfortunate as he had nowhere to go and while some might say he could have braked, so could Sergio. I understand it’s the hometown crowd but it’s still a shame to see/hear.

Pirelli Report:

The race was run in the highest temperatures seen all weekend, the track being at 52 °C at the start, dropping to 45 °C at the end. As expected, almost all the drivers chose to start on the Medium tyre, the exceptions being Ocon (Hard), Albon (Hard) and Norris (Soft). Once the race had settled down after the battles shortly after the start, the first part of the race saw the drivers play close attention to managing their tyres and cars. This applied to those who had definitely opted for a one-stop race as well as those keeping their options open to go for a two-stop, especially among the leaders. The Safety Car and the red flag that followed because of Magnussen’s crash, made it more complicated to determine which would be the quickest strategy, also because the race was now practically divided into two parts. The track condition improved significantly compared to the start of the weekend and this meant that the graining effect diminished progressively.

Mexican GP results: