Max Verstappen won the Mexican Grand Prix. Of course he did, he always wins the race. He’s possibly the best driver in definitely the fastest car operated by the sharpest team. The only notable thing about it was it made him the first man to win 14 grands prix in one season.
It was another magnificent performance, ground out by finding the car’s initially elusive sweet spot, putting the final Q3 lap together against a fast driver in a rival car which can be a bit snappy in low-speed corners, winning the start and carefully measuring out the tyre grip while keeping a gap to Lewis Hamilton’sMercedes behind. And from having the rival team choose the wrong tyres. It was enough to see him 15sec clear at the flag.
Verstappen’s performance really requires no deeper explanation than that. It’s the others around which there are questions.
Why were the Mercs so fast?
The numbers say George Russell lost pole to Verstappen by over 0.3sec. In reality Russell was neck-and-neck fighting for pole in the final Q3 runs until running wide entering the stadium section at the end of the lap. Russell felt certain pole had been there for the taking and he’d blown it. Hamilton in the other car had been super-fast in the practices but was suffering an engine oscillation in Q2 and Q3, taking the edge off his speed. Otherwise he too would surely have been vying for the top slot rather than lining up third.
Thinner air helped ‘draggy’ Mercedes performance
Mercedes
In the very same Mercedes W13 which was 0.6sec off the pace in qualifying at Austin seven days earlier, how come? The Mercedes is a much draggier car than the Red Bull but in air 25% thinner that costs nowhere near as much lap time as usual. The Mercedes delivers very good high-speed downforce and with that thin air, where downforce is at such a premium that Monaco wings give only Monza downthrust, every extra kg of it is rewarded more. Still faster in the corners, slower on the straights, but with a much better combination that gave it something close to Red Bull performance over the lap.
Why were the Ferraris so slow?
This season, as an average, the Ferrari is still – by less than 0.1sec over the Red Bull – the fastest-qualifying car. Here, Carlos Sainz in the quicker of them qualified 0.7sec adrift of Verstappen, with Charles Leclerc even further off. Taking into account the short length of the circuit, it was a worse performance even than Spa where its low-downforce aero package was not good.
Turned-down engine stymied Ferrari challenge
Ferrari
This time it wasn’t so much about aero performance as power unit. It utilises a smaller turbo than the others which together with long inlet tracts gives devastating low-speed acceleration. In theory a smaller turbo can give the same boost as a bigger one by running faster. That’s fine, so long as the various shafts and bearings allow it to run safely at that faster speed – a speed which increases in the thin air as all the turbos must run faster to reach the same boost target. With the Ferrari, that’s not the case. We saw an example of this in Austria where Sainz’s fiery exit was a result of a catastrophic turbo failure from running too fast in the thin mountain air. But that’s nowhere near as high an altitude as Mexico City. Ferrari was thus running with its turbo turned down here. In addition, it was a wayward handful on the hot track.
So Sainz and Leclerc finished a minute behind, albeit still a long way clear of the midfield.
Why did Mercedes choose the wrong tyre strategy?
It was too conservative. Red Bull, always sharp anyway, is right now in a particularly gung-ho mood, having sealed both championships. “As Dietrich [Mateschitz] used to say,” said Christian Horner, “No risk, no fun.”
Mercedes, desperate to score at least one victory this season with a car that’s generally scratching closer, but knowing this would likely be its best chance, tried to win it by logic and reasoning rather than feeling. But in this atmosphere there’s only so much reasoning that can be done.
Mercedes found itself caught out on tyre strategy
Mercedes
It was uncertain, going in, if this was set to be a one or a two-stop race. If it turned out that a one-stop would be the faster way, Mercedes did not believe the combination of a soft and medium tyre would give it the required range to complete the 71 laps. By starting on the medium, it had both one and two-stop options covered. It was a one-stop, but Red Bull proved it was perfectly feasible to start on the soft, switch to the medium and get to the end. Mercedes was always one step too hard by starting on the medium and feeling it must then switch to the hard because it was a one-stop.
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It greatly under-estimated the soft and over-estimated the hard. That was partly because the track temperature dropped very quickly indeed from an initial 47C to 39C. That brought the soft on the Red Bulls for the first stint very much into their window – and later prevented the hard on the Mercs’ second stint from reaching working temperature.
After winning the start, Verstappen hung Russell out over the exit of Turn 2, allowing Hamilton up to second and Sergio Perez up to third. That was the finishing order.
Where Was Perez?
Fourth of the four fast cars in qualifying after a faulty sensor sent his electrics haywire, third once he’d slipstreamed by the compromised Russell up to Turn 4 on the opening lap.
He would probably have undercut his way past Hamilton had a wheelnut not jammed on and lost him around 2.5sec, bringing him out behind the Ferraris he’d have otherwise cleared. On better tyres, Perez was faster than the Mercs, but not by enough to be able to overtake Hamilton.
Who was best of the rest?
Ricciardo produced a throwback performance in Mexico
McLaren
Daniel Ricciardo in the McLaren. In a race where we have a fast Mercedes and a slow Ferrari, why not continue that retro theme and have Ricciardo running super-long on his initial medium tyres, long enough to get onto the softs, which were working so well, and then to dive-bomb past a whole sequence of cars in a late-race frenzy? Classic Ricciardo – of a few years ago.
He played his cards well but in reality, the hand he’d been dealt was good. Running a few places behind team-mate Lando Norris he wasn’t under any undercut threat, unlike Lando. He thus wasn’t forced to pit early enough that he was forced onto hards. His pass on Yuki Tsunoda resulted in contact hard enough to rear the AlphaTauri in the air and Ricciardo was penalised 10sec for that – but it didn’t change the position.
