1 Verstappen overturns qualifying upset to extends points lead
pointed to Mexico being a Red Bull stronghold and a chance for Max Verstappen to extend his championship lead over Lewis Hamilton. That’s ultimately what transpired, thanks to Red Bull having a clear advantage over Mercedes in the race, but it also took some gutsy driving from Verstappen after he and team-mate Sergio Pérez both failed to qualify on the front row.
That was the biggest surprise of all, given Mercedes was well off the pace after practice, despite tuning its engine to become a match for Honda at altitude. Red Bull repaired cracked rear wings then failed to top any of qualifying’s three segments, with Verstappen ultimately 0.350 seconds behind pole-winner Valtteri Bottas, and two tenths off Hamilton.
Much was made of the incident late in Q3, where Yuki Tsunoda – facing a grid penalty so deployed only to tow Pierre Gasly to fifth on the grid – drove off the circuit trying to avoid delaying
Pérez and Verstappen. Pérez slid off, as though distracted by Tsunoda’s antics, and Verstappen aborted his flying lap anticipating yellow flags. Christian Horner said his drivers had been “Tsunoda’d”; Mercedes maintained its cars would have qualified ahead regardless.
Certainly, Red Bull struggled to get the medium and soft-compound tyres working properly in Q2 and Q3. Verstappen complained of rear sliding. Mclaren’s Andreas Seidl alluded to the highaltitude in Mexico City requiring unusual brake cooling set-ups, which in turn affects how the tyres and wheels absorb heat.
Whatever the precise reasons for Red Bull failing to balance its axles sufficiently, it only took the start and first turn for Verstappen to correct course. Hamilton got the best launch from second on the grid and stayed on Bottas’s inside on the long drag to Turn 1. Verstappen also got away well and moved to Bottas’s outside. When it finally came to the game of chicken on the brakes,
Verstappen swept bravely around both Mercs to grab the lead, while Bottas was too circumspect – “he left the door open for Max”, was Hamilton’s view – and was rear-ended by Daniel Ricciardo’s slightly out of control Mclaren at the Turn 1 apex.
“Because I was on the inside on the dirt, there was no hope for me,” said Hamilton – which was true also of the rest of his race. Hamilton had to work extremely hard to stay ahead of Pérez, never mind challenge Verstappen for victory.
“I think yesterday flattered us,” said Mercedes engineering director Andrew Shovlin, who feels Red Bull has the edge on highest-downforce settings and rear-limited circuits such as this. “In the hotter conditions today, we were struggling a bit more with rear grip; I don’t think we’ve got as much downforce as they have when we go to maximum downforce and that was costing us.
“The fact is, when you are off the pace by whatever we were today, three or four tenths, then it is very difficult to win races.”
2
Bottas goes from hero to zero
Valtteri Bottas did two laps fast enough for pole in Q3, calling this perhaps the best qualifying performance of his career (and who would disagree?), but having been turned around by Daniel Ricciardo’s Mclaren after the start, Bottas then suffered the ignominy of spending pretty much the entire remainder of his race stuck behind that very same car.
“When you’re on the same age tyres it’s difficult,” was Mercedes engineering director Andrew Shovlin’s assessment of Bottas’s struggles to recover. “As we got closer, we were sliding around. I think everyone was having to manage power unit temperatures a bit, so sitting there lap after lap was a problem, and also Ricciardo was able to manage through the lap to get a good exit from the last corner, and if you exit the last corner well, it’s very, very difficult to launch an attack.”
Bottas at least made a small contribution to the title fight by taking on a set of soft tyres and setting the fastest lap of the race on his final circuit, denying Verstappen a bonus point.
3
Ferrari disappointed despite overhauling Mclaren
On the face of it, getting both cars home in the top six and leaving Mexico with a 13.5-point advantage over Mclaren in the constructors’ championship looked a good weekend’s work from Ferrari.
Maranello’s finest came into this race imbued with optimism, thanks to recent improvements to its engine’s ERS, high altitude reducing dependence on overall power, and the SF21’S relative strength on maximum downforce.
Carlos Sainz was narrowly best of the rest in FP2 and FP3, but Pierre Gasly’s Alphatauri stole ahead in qualifying, while Daniel Ricciardo’s Mclarenmercedes split Sainz from Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari.
The prancing horses recovered to fifth and sixth in the race, in part thanks to Ricciardo’s first-lap misfortune, and Mclaren only scored a single point with Lando Norris (who started 18th owing to a grid penalty), but Gasly finishing almost 20s up the road left team boss Mattia Binotto disappointed.
“If I look at the last races, I think we had a pace which was a lot closer to the top teams,” he said. “And for a while today, it was somehow nine-tenths, a second. Honestly, I was hoping coming to Mexico to have a better overall relative performance, which has not been the case.”