Martin Brundle on the results of the Mexico City Grand Prix

Martin Brundle, former Formula 1 driver and now a sought-after Sky Sports commentator, shared his impressions of the final stage in Mexico City, where Max Verstappen took his 16th win of the season, stopping his teammate in the first corner after the start ..

If we talk about the intrigue of Sunday’s race as a whole, it was greatly spoiled by the first corner incident. Verstappen managed to stay ahead of both Ferrari cars, which started from the front row in front of him, and Sergio Perez, his Red Bull Racing teammate, collided with Charles Leclerc, and all this happened in front of a patriotic crowd of his compatriots who filled the stands of the circuit and passionately wished him luck.

My colleagues at Sky Sports F1 and I reasoned: perhaps this deafening support Sergio received in Mexico only added more pressure and affected his form, which wasn’t the best anyway? Or does it actually give him extra motivation?

Perez did everything right – but only when he had to enter the 1st corner. He made a great start from 5th position, taking advantage of the slipstream behind the three cars accelerating in front of him, ideally choosing the gap on the left side of the track, where the asphalt was also cleaner, and entering the corner along a wider trajectory .

But he became a victim of his own excellent start and, in general, good decisions he made at the time, because Sergio had already overtaken Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen and could have taken the lead.

He then explained that since he had already been on the podium twice at this circuit, he now wanted to lead the race and win. But as sad as it may be, everything suddenly went wrong.

At a speed of less than 300 km/h he made two mistakes in a split second. He believed that Leclerc, caught between two Red Bull cars, would brake sooner; It can be assumed that he expected the same from Verstappen, who drove on a dustier inner route, which forced the Dutchman to enter the corner much steeper. But neither one nor the other started braking early and fully controlled the behavior of their cars.

Sergio’s biggest mistake was turning the wheel too sharply and too early, although he should have entered the corner along a wider path, and then he would have gained an advantage passing the second part of the chicane.

Leclerc had no room to maneuver because Verstappen drove to the right, and there was quite hard contact between the cars of Sergio and Charles, and since the tires in Formula 1 are wide and “sticky”, the Mexican Red Bull went into the air and it was instant all over. Clearly, there couldn’t have been a worse start to the race for him, his team, the Mexican fans and the race promoters.

One of the most unpredictable qualifications

Saturday’s qualifying, which determined the starting order of the race, was one of the most unpredictable and strange in my memory.

The reasons for this were probably a combination of a slippery track, a lack of downforce due to thin air at an altitude of 2240 m above sea level, a slightly decreased but still quite high asphalt temperature, changing wind strength and direction, and the power of the drivers to properly prepare their tires when leaving the pits, and it is also possible that there is a slight variation in the behavior of different sets of Pirelli soft tires.

There were people, like Alex Albon, who couldn’t even come close to their own results, which they showed during training – the Williams driver even thought his car was damaged. But the Ferrari pilots, who occupied the entire front row and talked to each other, were surprised: “Where does that speed come from?”

Daniel Ricciardo, who performed confidently behind the wheel of an AlphaTauri this weekend, managed to take 4th place in qualifying, ahead of Sergio Perez and both Mercedes drivers.

Both Alfa Romeo drivers also impressed, with Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou making it to the final session, although they finished last in Sunday’s race, further confirming the strange nature of qualifying.

Oscar Piastri showed the seventh result, but Lando Norris, his McLaren teammate, did not get beyond the first session at all – qualifying was extremely unsuccessful for him.

For his first attempt, the wrong amount of fuel was put into his car’s tank and he had to return to the pits. He made a mistake on his second attempt and when Lando tried to do a fast lap for the last time, yellow flags appeared on the track due to a strange spin from Fernando Alonso.

Norris was expected to start last, but moved up to 17th position thanks to penalties for Logan Sargent and Yuki Tsunoda, as well as Lance Stroll starting the race from the pit lane.

One of Lando Norris’s best races

After starting from the penultimate row of the grid, Norris drove perhaps his best Formula 1 race to date, finishing fifth. He managed to perform bright and daring overtakes, although the restart failed him. The restart was due to the race being suspended by red flags following Kevin Magnussen’s heavy crash following a failed suspension of his Haas. Luckily he was only shocked, but there were no injuries.

McLaren decided that Lando would start on soft tyres, on which he didn’t actually play many positions, before pitting on lap 11 and being given a set of hard tyres. On the 33rd lap I switched to Medium and on the 35th the red flags came out.

After that, although at the restart he allowed excessive slippage of the drive wheels and rolled back, Lando had an excellent race, taking 5th place and for the fourth time in a row, according to the results of the fans’ vote, was rightly recognized as “Runner of day”.

Another contender for this title was Lewis Hamilton, who took second place in Mexico City, which he was very happy with. There have been times when such results have upset him, but not now, and his excellent overtake on Leclerc is particularly notable. Lewis also received an extra bonus point for the best lap and is now only twenty points behind Perez, who is still in second place in the individual classification.

Ricciardo achieved a very good seventh result and earned AlphaTauri the points his team desperately needed. His teammate, Yuki Tsunoda, was also in the top ten, but only before starting a dispute for position with Oscar Piastri did he remain on the losing side and it all ended in a collision. However, the stewards deemed it a racing incident.

After the battle race, Alex Albon earned a few points for Williams, finishing ninth, while Esteban Ocon completed the top ten.

Aston Martin’s cars did not look their best from the start, but unfortunately Fernando Alonso and Lance Stroll were unable to reach the finish for various reasons. But just a few months ago, Alonso seemed one of the few who could at least keep Verstappen in sight, but now he has fallen to 5th place in the personal classification and is already feeling pressure from Norris, Leclerc and Russell.