The local hero out, red flags and Verstappen breaking his own records

The Mexico Grand Prix was an incredibly exciting and fun race. Already in the practice and qualifying sessions we got to see a lot of surprising results, but as always the race topped them all.

With Ferrari on pole 1 - 2 and Max Verstappen starting from place 3, the start was bound to be great. What no one was expecting was the local hero Sergio “Checo” Perez being out in the first turn of lap one, after an unlucky contact with Charles Leclerc, when Perez turned into the corner to quickly and hit Leclerc, who could not move anywhere due to Verstappen being on his other side. While Perez had to retire, Leclerc kept driving with slight front wing damage, which caused a virtual safety car later on, as a bit of debris had to be picked up.

Throughout the next laps we witnessed a lot of position battles and overtakes in the entire grid, also caused by pit stops.

In lap 33 Kevin Magnussens suspension broke, causing him to crash horribly. The Haas driver is luckily fine and being kept under supervision right now. A red flag was issued and during the ca 20 minutes spend repairing the borders and getting the car and driver off track, the teams got to change their tyres and repair any damage that may have been caused during the first half of the race.

The restart was just as exciting as the first one, with Hamilton close behind Leclerc, but still not managing to overtake him.

Two drivers who battled themselves for 7th place constantly were Tsunoda and Piastri. In lap 49 they had contact, causing Tsunoda to spin and lose 8 positions, dropping down to 16. Later on we saw both Alpines chasing Nico Hulkenberg, who celebrated his 200th Grand Prix this weekend, for Place 10. But we can’t talk about overtaking without mentioning Lando Norris, who started the race in place 17, after being eliminated in Q1, and did not only end the race in the points but on P5, having made up a total of 12 positions in the 71 laps. Norris was voted driver of the day.

During this second half of the race both Aston Martin retired too, Stroll in lap 67 due to overheating.

Being 15 seconds in front of sir Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen won his 16th race this season, breaking his own record of most wins in a single season. Hamilton finished second, with Leclerc 9 seconds behind him in third.

Sainz (4), Norris (5) and Russell (6) make up the next 3. Also finishing in the points, in P7, was Daniel Ricciardo, who showed us incredible pace and battles this weekend, only his second race after recovering from his injury. He was followed by Piastri (8), Albon (9) and Ocon (10).

As a conclusion you can say that this weekend was an up and down, left and right kind of ride and while we can’t wait for Brazil next week we wish Magnussen a very speedy recovery!