Mexican Grand Prix – The race: Verstappen claims victory after a brilliant start!

The start: Verstappen imperial, Tsunoda out.

Traffic jam at the first corner. Starting third, Verstappen takes advantage of the slipstream provided by Bottas. The Finn finds himself caught in a sandwich between the Dutchman on his left and his teammate on his right. In order to protect Hamilton, he brakes relatively early, allowing Verstappen to take the lead by overtaking the Mercedes on the outside.

It’s Daniel Ricciardo who plays the kamikazes and drags Bottas into the maneuver, also losing his front wing in the process.

At the same time, Yuki Tsunoda is also involved in a collision and has to retire.

The fifth lap marks the restart under safety car.

Hamilton is now isolated, and finds himself between the two Red Bulls. Verstappen fears this long straight and opts for the zigzag dragon technique, allowing him to maintain his advantage.

Behind, Gasly is an astonishing 4th, ahead of the two Ferraris that have just overtaken Giovinazzi.

An animated start to the race

George Russell takes advantage of this chaotic start to move up to ninth place. He is quickly overtaken by Räikkönen, then Alonso.

Following his blunder, Ricciardo tries to make up for it and launches multiple attacks.

On the thirteenth lap, Lance Stroll decides to switch to hard tires, just like Ricciardo did by changing his front wing. Mazepin, Giovinazzi, Latifi, and Russell do the same.

This allows Bottas, whose pace is rather slow, to move up to twelfth place.

Perez puts pressure on Hamilton.

Verstappen is managing his race in the lead, he has a six-second lead over Hamilton on the 18th lap. Behind him, the local driver is putting pressure on a struggling Hamilton with his yellow tires. The Red Bull strategy is in motion.

On the 25th lap, Lewis Hamilton makes a surprising “

These guys are much faster than us

” which he completes a few moments later with: “

I cannot build a lead on Perez

“.

We know he’s very good at communication, but at this moment, he seems to fear the undercut from the Mexican.

Offbeat strategy for Mercedes and Hamilton

A train of latecomers in front of the British driver prompts Mercedes to bring him in earlier.

He stops on the 30th lap to put on hard tires, but comes out behind Leclerc’s Ferrari and his out lap is rather long.

However, Perez stumbles upon this famous group of drivers to overtake, which in fact validates the Germans’ strategy.

Red Bull is taking the gamble of keeping Perez on track in order to have less worn tires towards the end of the race. The goal is also to see if the competition’s hard tires remain efficient for a long time. On his side, Verstappen doesn’t wait and changes his tires on the 33rd lap. He was catching up to Bottas.

Ultimately, the gap between the two rivals did not change with these pit stops.

Perez and Sainz making their way up towards the end of the race.

Ferrari has chosen to bring in its Monegasque driver very early, so by the end of the race, his teammate has hard tires 11 laps fresher. He catches up on the 58th lap and immediately overtakes. The goal now is to go for Pierre Gasly’s fourth place.

The French driver is having an anonymous race. He is alone behind the three leaders, but his Grand Prix is ​​strong and has a 12-second cushion over Sainz with 12 laps to go until the checkered flag.

On his side, Sergio Perez benefits, just like Sainz, from tires less worn than Hamilton’s and is getting closer to the seven-time champion by less than a second while there are only 10 laps left to cover. The Mexican had three laps to try to overtake Hamilton before his tires gave out. He has to settle for the last step of the podium. Even though he believed until the end, because Hamilton saw his tires collapse in the last three laps.

Bottas pits to snatch the fastest lap point from Verstappen

With five laps to go, the Finn switches to soft tires to secure the fastest lap point in the race.

However, he is right behind Max Verstappen, and the latter does not intend to make it easy for him. The Dutchman slows him down on the first attempt, then lets him pass on his second attempt before imposing a blue flag on him, depriving him once again of a quick lap.

Thus, Mercedes decides to stop the number 77 for the last time so that it comes out isolated to make its move in the final lap of the race.

Race results