MEXICO CITY GP – Max Verstappen dominates to take record-breaking fourteenth win of the season, as Mercedes challenge filters away

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Max Verstappen won the Mexico City Grand Prix by fifteen seconds ahead of Lewis Hamilton to become the most successful driver at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez as he took his fourth win at the circuit as well as passing Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel for number of wins in a season with his fourteenth win of 2022.

The Dutchman made a brilliant start despite being passed Lewis Hamilton on the way to Turn One, but then slipstreamed passed George Russell to take second and then got a better drive out of Three to pass Hamilton. That gave him control for the rest of the race breaking the DRS threat, despite their best efforts neither Mercedes could get under a second to try a DRS-assisted attack.

The seven-time champion then was able to shadow the Red Bull for much of the race, however, the speed of the Red Bull was too much. Mercedes looked their strongest of the season however that early promise soon faded following the first round of stops as they took a different strategy to Red Bull. That allowed Verstappen to cruise to victory as he left Hamilton to fight with Sergio Perez, as they looked to see their best chance of victory slip away.

Hamilton now only has two more chances to extend his record of winning a race in every one of his F1 seasons, with Mercedes’ hopes of Red Bull’s tyres fading away ultimately fruitless. He had repeatedly complained about his tyres lacking performance, and was reassured by his engineers that the mediums would drop away towards the end of the race.

The divergent strategies didn’t allow the team to go after Verstappen for the win, with the Englishman finishing almost three seconds ahead of Perez. Perez managed to extend his first stint which gave him the advantage over George Russell and take a podium finish in front of the passionate home fans.

He was then able to pull away from the Mercedes driver, Russell effectively the sacrifice for his teammate Hamilton, as the team went about trying to win the first race since Interlagos last November.

In hindsight Mercedes CEO and team principal, Toto Wolff admitted “it was the wrong choice.” But there will be questions about whether Russell was right to call for a gamble at worst it wouldn’t have changed his position.

Verstappen said “we were also on a different strategy to the cars around us but again an incredible result. The pace of the car was really nice. We had to look after our tyres because it was a very long stint on the medium but we made it work.”

Hamilton added, “I was so close in that first stint Red Bulls clearly too fast and also maybe had a better tyre strategy. Yeah I’m not sure it was right tyre at end. I thought we should’ve started on the softs but we had the opposite tyre.”

Perez said, “I gave it my best today at the start. I really pushed hard. Unfortunately, we had a bad stop which prevented us from undercutting Lewis [Hamilton]. Overtaking is so difficult, as soon as I got behind him it was so difficult to follow so I had to stay in third.”

Red Bull’s biggest challengers this season Ferrari, the dismal weekend continued as they dropped out of the fight at the front, Carlos Sainz finishing fifth over ten seconds ahead of teammate Charles Leclerc. All weekend the Scuderia has struggled to show the pace they have had this season when they have often been the closet challengers to Red Bull.

Daniel Ricciardo was best of the rest, the McLaren driver taking seventh as in the closing stages Fernando Alonso developed an engine failure. The Alpine driver losing several places to Esteban Ocon, and Lando Norris before retiring.

Ricciardo was another driver to make the long game work, the Australian doing the second longest opening stint on the soft. However, while looking good on the softs, after clearing Ocon who he had a twelve-second lead over. Before he had a collision with Yuki Tsunoda leading to the Alpha Tauri’s drivers’ retirement and Ricciardo getting a ten second penalty.

He still was able to retain seventh ahead of Ocon and Norris, key for McLaren in their battle with Alpine in the constructors. Valtteri Bottas continued his strong weekend scoring Alfa Rome’s first point since Monza with tenth.

Pierre Gasly was eleventh ahead of Alex Albon and Guanyu Zhou, the Chinese driver running a long opening stint and one stopping. The Frenchman also gained a five-second penalty for a nudge of Lance Stroll, the Canadian finishing fifteenth behind his Aston Martin teammate Sebastian Vettel.

Mick Schumacher was sixteenth ahead of Haas teammate Kevin Magnussen, Nicolas Latifi the final finisher in eighteenth.

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