Max Verstappen Wins the Mexico City Grand Prix to break victories records

Max Verstappen of Red Bull won the Mexico City Grand Prix with ease and control, breaking the previous record for most victories in a season.

During the opening stages of the race, the world champion held off a charge from Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes before gaining distance and claiming his 14th victory of the year. Red Bull’s Sergio Perez managed to finish third ahead of Mercedes’ George Russell.

The Dutchman now moves clear of the previous record set by Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel, who each won 13 races in 2004 and 2013.

Mercedes entered the race with high expectations after qualifying in second and third place, just behind Verstappen. However, Verstappen surged into his own race following the pit stops, despite the early promise for Mercedes fading due to differing tyre strategy, leaving Hamilton to battle Perez for second place.

How the race was won

Mercedes started on the “medium” tyre while Red Bull started on the “soft,” raising the question of how the two contrasting approaches would develop in the race.

Verstappen was able to maintain the lead into the first corner. Hamilton passed Russell to take second place at the second turn, and Perez followed two corners later.

Verstappen was closely followed by Hamilton throughout the opening stint, and it was obvious that Red Bull was under pressure from Mercedes.

However, the stress subsided immediately after Red Bull made a pit stop for tires on lap 25, changing to medium tyres, while Hamilton changed to hard tyres four laps later. Verstappen’s ability to follow Hamilton’s lead and complete the race without stopping was in doubt.

The hard tyre quickly proved to be a bad choice as Hamilton, who trialled 6.5 seconds behind Verstappen, gradually pulled further and further away from the Red Bull.

When Hamilton complained about the performance of his tyres, his engineers informed him that the mediums would lose grip toward the end of the race. However, Verstappen claimed another easy victory as they held on nicely.

Mercedes team boss Toto Wolff told Lewis Hamilton over the radio that their tyre choice was most likely not right. Hamilton stated in the post-race interviews that he believed Mercedes should have started on soft tyres like Red Bull.

The rest of the track

Russell requested that his engineers leave him out and switch to the soft tyres for a sprint later in the race after the leaders’ pit stops propelled him into the lead.

Russell was brought in for his stop five laps after Hamilton as the engineers decided that it wasn’t a good plan, restarting in fourth place, where he remained until the end of the race. There will undoubtedly be questions over whether Mercedes would have been better off if she had taken Russell’s advice.

In the worst case, he would have finished no worse than fourth, thus there was a potential reward in taking the risk even though it would have required him to make up a lot of ground and leave him with three cars to pass for the victory.

This was shown by Daniel Ricciardo, who chose the medium-soft strategy and gained a lot of ground in the process. He finished seventh, best in the middle of the pack behind the two uncompetitive Ferraris driven by Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, after moving up from outside the top 10.

The Australian was given a 10-second penalty for colliding with Yuki Tsunoda’s Alpha Tauri and forcing it into retirement, but such was his pace that he kept seventh place because his gap to Esteban Ocon’s Alpine behind was more than that.

Due to his pace, the Australian was able to maintain seventh place despite receiving a 10-second time penalty for hitting Yuki Tsunoda’s Alpha Tauri and causing it to withdraw. With Fernando Alonso’s Alpine experiencing yet another technical issue, Ricciardo was able to overtake him.

The Spaniard started the race in seventh place and led the midfield for most of the race, but as the race came to a close, he started to lose ground as his engine started to malfunction. With six laps remaining, the engine finally failed.

Ocon moved up to seventh as a result of Alonso’s issue, ahead of Lando Norris of McLaren and Valtteri Bottas of Alfa Romeo. On the penultimate lap, Bottas narrowly held off Pierre Gasly of the Alpha Tauri, another driver who chose the medium-soft strategy.

2022 FIA Formula One World Championship Schedule