Race Repot: Sainz dominates the Mexico GP

Carlos Sainz and Ferrari took a dominant win at the Formula 1 Mexico Grand Prix with Lando Norris and Charles Leclerc completing the podium. Ferrari capitalized on their improved pace with another win just a week after dominating the Us Grand Prix by winning from Poole position.

Win

A big win for Ferrari and while Charles Leclerc ran wide late in the race handing P2 to Lando Norris, Carlos Sainz was dominant all weekend. He said he wanted one more win with Ferrari and you could tell back on Friday that he meant it! Ferrari are getting dangerously close the Constructor’s championship and if they continue their pace, they may well be the team to beat for the title.

A win for Lando Norris finishing in P2 after getting mugged by Max Verstappen in the early stages of the race. Two penalties for Max left Lando to manage his race but he ran out of laps to catch Carlos although he was reeling him in which might suggest that the McLaren was quick over the long run.

Given the challenges they had all weekend and a crash from George Russell, Mercedes did bounce back to a P4 and P5 finish for Lewis Hamilton and George Russell respectively. That’s good but the bad news is, they were over half a minute behind the leaders.

A big win for Haas F1. Both Kevin Magnussen and Nico Hulkenberg were in the points—P7 and P9 respectively—and this is a big testament to the hard work the team have done and the leadership change. Great to see this team back toward the sharp end of the grid!

It’s not a huge win but a point for Alpine and Pierre Gasly but I’d argue with Perez and Alonso out, that may have been a bit of a gift.

Fail

A fail for Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez and Red Bull. Max was penalized 20s for two incidents involving Lando Norris and Sergio wasn’t there to pick up the pieces and deny Lando a podium. It seems like Max has the driver’s championship in the bag but races like this with penalties and a possible mechanical issue or DNF could change things quickly!

A fail for RB with Liam Lawson getting in a tangle with Sergio and then getting punted off by Colapinto shoved him out of the points. Yuki got caught out by Albon as Alex was squeezed in a sandwich of Yuki and Gasly with nowhere to go.

A fail for Aston Martin with an overheating issue and DNF for Fernando Alonso and Lance stroll couldn’t capitalize on three cars being out of the race to score points.

WTH

Not sure what Sauber have to do to score points at this stage. With three cars out, they still couldn’t even see the points-scoring positions from their vantage point.

Lot’s of talk about the Max and Lando incident and the need to clarify the rules. We’ve done this already Tim talk of car lengths ahead into the apex, giving a car’s width etc. The point is, these cars are closely matched now and this will come up every race. All 20 drivers will dive for the apex and run others out wide. A couple years ago, fans were adamant that Max should have lifted to avoid Lewis hitting him in the British grand prix…somehow, that notion seems to have been forgotten now.

Pirelli’s View:

14 drivers opted to start on the Medium, while six (Perez, Ocon, Colapinto, Lawson, Bottas and Zhou) went with the Hard. The Safety Car was required right from the opening lap following the collision between Tsunoda and Albon, which led to both of them retiring. In the first few laps after the restart, the race was action-packed with drivers passing and repassing, giving the Stewards plenty of work to do… Then the race settled down, especially the leading positions, before springing back to life in the closing stages with duels between Leclerc and Norris and the Mercedes pair. The only unusual aspects were Verstappen’s climb through the field, having dropped down the order with a double penalty totalling 20 seconds, before he eventually made it up to sixth place. There was also a long distance chess game as some drivers tried to gain, or stop others from gaining, the extra point for the race fastest lap.

Piastri drove the longest stint on the Medium, doing the opening 39 laps on a set of the C4. The longest stint of all on one set of tyres came from one of the specialists in this discipline, namely Bottas who ran 49 laps on the Hard.

Aside from the final pit stops at the very end in the chase for the fastest lap time, all the drivers ran a one-stop race with the exception of Perez who, starting down the back, tried something different.

Mexico GP Results: