1200 kilometres separate Austin from Mexico City, but on the racetrack not that much seems to have changed since last week. A Ferrari won in Texas and a Ferrari won in the Mexican capital. This time it was Carlos Sainz first past the chequered flag, while team-mate Charles Leclerc came home third. Splitting the two Italian cars was Lando Norris. For the Spaniard, this was career win number four, the second this season after Melbourne.
It is the 248th win for Ferrari, the second in a row and the fifth this year, and the most wins it has scored in a season since 2018. It is also the Scuderia’s third win on the track named after the Rodriguez brothers, following on from victories for Jacky Ickx in 1970 and Alain Prost in 1990.3.
Verstappen’s lead in the Drivers’ classification has now come down to 47 points ahead of Norris and 71 more than Leclerc. In the Constructors’ standings, McLaren still leads on 566 points while Ferrari has 537 and has moved ahead of Red Bull who are now third on 512.
THE DAY ON TRACK
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.
MARIO ISOLA – PIRELLI DIRECTOR OF MOTORSPORT
“A race that provided plenty of excitement right from the start, before gradually settling down, at least as far as the leaders were concerned, before livening up again towards the finish with duels between Leclerc and Norris and an even longer one between Hamilton and Russell. There was plenty of action behind the top five, and at the very end, several drivers pitted for fresh tyres to go for the fastest race lap.
“In terms of strategy, the predictions going into the event were confirmed, with the one-stop being the outright favourite and starting on the Medium before switching to the Hard proving to be the quickest of all the various combinations. Piastri was a good example of this, because even starting from a long way back on the grid, he adopted the same strategy as those at the front and was able to finish in the points.
“Usually, one-stop races require careful tyre management, but today we saw that the drivers were able to push without worrying too much about degradation, which was very limited on both compounds. The Medium showed a few signs of graining, but that did not affect performance excessively, while the Hard always performed well, even for those running the longest stints which came close to the 50 laps mark.”
