@Max33Verstappen cruises to dominant #MexicoCityGP victory. #F1 #F1ESTA #MexicoGP

Verstappen Mexico City GP Victory – Red Bull’s Max Verstappen passed the record for most wins in a single season with a dominant victory at the Mexico City GP ahead of Mercedes’ Sir Lewis Hamilton who was second and team-mate Sergio Perez who completed the top three.

Verstappen lead from start-to-finish with a solid drive, finishing a comfortable 15.584 seconds clear of Hamilton for his 34^th F1-career victory as his soft-medium strategy worked to perfection and Perez was a further 18.097 behind in third at his home Grand Prix.

The other Mercedes F1 W13 entry of George Russell finished a distant fourth taking the fastest lap bonus point as both Ferrari drivers had a race to forget with Carlos Sainz a distant fifth and Charles Leclerc sixth in his 100^th Grand Prix start.

When the 71-lap Mexico City GP began, pole-sitter Verstappen starting on softs, launched well in-front of Russell and swung ahead of the Silver Arrows on the very long run to the opening corner – with Russell gaining from the Red Bull’s slip-stream to run ahead of Hamilton and Perez.

Just before they braked before the first turn, Russell moved left to the outside line, but ended up following the leading Dutchman through the right-hand corner and deep towards the grass run-off on the outside.

As Verstappen made his way through not threatened, Russell hopped over the kerbs at the second corner, with Hamilton by this time alongside his Mercedes team-mate and got his way ahead with a better drive out of turn three.

There Russell came along Hamilton but ran out of room and had to jump over the kerbs, losing momentum and being overtaken quickly by Perez into turn four at the end of the second straight.

Verstappen immediately moved out of DRS range at the end of the opening tour with a 1.232 second gap over Hamilton, with the Briton chasing the newly-crowned two-time world champion having started on the yellow-marked C3 medium compounds, as did Russell, compared to the softs fitted to both Red Bull RB18 entries.

Over the next phase of the Grand Prix, the gap between the leaders slightly fluctuated, but generally held around the 1.5 second range as Perez and Russell ran a few seconds further off and falling more adrift over the course of the opening stint.

Approaching the end of the Grand Prix’s opening quarter, Verstappen stepped-up his pace in an attempt to break the slip-stream to the Mercedes, but Hamilton was able to hang on just over two seconds behind before the leader’s softs began to degrade.

From a maximum lead of 2.4 seconds, Verstappen’s gap was down to 1.6 seconds by the time he pitted on the end of lap 25 – one tour after team-mate Perez had stopped and suffered a soft left-rear tyre change that left him halted for five seconds.

Running the more durable compound, Mercedes left Hamilton out – his mediums showed none of the darker wear patches that had been evident on Verstappen’s front-left soft before be pitted.

But Hamilton remained out for another four tours before he was brought in for a set of the C2 white side-walled harder tyres, with the Silver Arrows instead leaving Russell out to complete a longer opening stint.

The Briton therefore lead until the end of lap 34, Verstappen cycled back to the front at halfway through the race with a near seven-second gap and Hamilton under more pressure from Perez close behind – the Mexican having cleared the off-paced Ferrari duo after his slow stop.

Hamilton suggested the harder compounds were not performing as well as the mediums he had gotten rid of, with the Silver Arrows in-turn implying the performance drop-off logged at the end of his first stint could give him the opportunity to catch Verstappen in the latter stages.

This looked a mighty challenge 15 tours into Hamilton’s second as he faced a near 10-second gap to the dominant race leader, but at least able to keep Perez at bay just a few seconds behind.

Indeed proceedings remained stable, and Hamilton questioned whether his hard tyres was the right choice to be on and Mercedes insisted that it was due to his added durability on a one-stop strategy.

But with Verstappen continuing to pull away by a few tenths each tour as the leaders made their way through the traffic, with 15 laps remaining, the Dutchman had a lead of 12.1 seconds.

As it turned out, Mercedes hoped for a dramatic pace drop-off from the Red Bulls, but it never happened and Verstappen flew to a solid Mexico City GP victory by 15.584 seconds and the record of 14 race wins in a single season, completing a huge 46 laps on the medium compounds.

A late race stoppage for Alpine’s Fernando Alonso, who was running comfortably in seventh before an engine problem caused him to lose pace and eventually pulled off at the turn one run-off area and did not cause much of a disruption other than a short virtual safety car period on laps 65-66 as the A522 racer was removed behind the barriers.

Perez wound up 2.9 seconds behind Hamilton having dropped further behind shortly before the virtual safety car, with Russell fourth and also frustrated at running the hards on his second stint.

This ended up being the middle stint as Mercedes opted to bring Russell in to bolt on a set of softs to push for the bonus fastest lap point, with the Briton scored on the final tour with a 1:20.153.

Sainz lead Leclerc home in a quiet race for Ferrari – the Spaniard ended up a massive 58.8 seconds off race-winner Verstappen and the only action for the pairing involved Perez’s post-stop overtaking and Sainz doing the same to Alonso after his own pit-stop to go from softs to mediums.

Leclerc, the last car on the lead lap, was a further ten-seconds behind the Spaniard, the drama to the finish concerned McLaren’s Daniel Ricciardo.

The Australian produced the second-longest opening stint on the medium rubber in remaining out until lap 45, after which he was quick on the softs, but made a bad mistake hitting AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda at turn six a few tours after his pit-stop.

With the AT03 retiring in the pits, Ricciardo was slapped with a 10-second time penalty, which he overcame with a brilliant climb up the field after being let through by McLaren team-mate Lando Norris, who was running a medium-hard tyre strategy.

Ricciardo produced overtake-after-overtake – including being part of a double move on Alonso into the first corner shortly before the double world champion retired, with his Alpine team-mate Esteban Ocon going by ahead of Ricciardo into turn one before in-turn being caught and passed by the McLaren.

In clear air from there, Ricciardo charged ahead of the Frenchman and finished 12.1 seconds clear to negate his penalty.

Norris and Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas, who had fallen back on lap one after his impressive qualifying effort and then battled the Alpine pairing in the opening and middle phases of the Grand Prix before dropping back, rounded out the top ten.

AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly finished outside the top ten in 11^th place and ahead of Williams Racing’s Alexander Albon who was 12^th and Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu who had an intense battle with Aston Martin’s Sebastian Vettel who placed in 14^th behind the Chinese driver.

The other Aston Martin AMR22 entry of Lance Stroll crossed the line 15^th and in-front of Haas F1 Team pairing Mick Schumacher and Kevin Magnussen who ended the race 16^th and 17^th respectively.

Williams Racing’s Nicholas Latifi came last of the runners as both Alonso and Tsunoda were the only retirements of the race.

2022 Mexico City GP – The Top Three

2022 Mexico City GP winner – Max Verstappen, #1, Oracle Red Bull Racing-RBPT, RB18:

“An incredible result, the pace of the car was very nice. We had to look after our tyres!”

2^nd Place – Lewis Hamilton, #44, Mercedes AMG Petronas Motorsport, F1 W13 E Performance:

“First this has been an amazing crowd, I have so much love for Mexico and the people here. I was so close in that first stint, but the Red Bulls were too quick today and maybe they had the better strategy. I’m not sure [the hard] was the right tyre in the end.”

3^rd Place – Sergio Perez, #11, Oracle Red Bull Racing-RBPT, RB18:

“I gave my best today at the start, I really pushed hard. Unfortunately we had a bad stop to prevent us undercutting Lewis. Then behind him, it was difficult to follow so I had to stay in third. Still, it’s a good podium and in front of this crowd – I really wanted more today but third is still good.”

Formula 1 Gran Premio De La Ciudad De Mexico 2022 Race Results Classification (71 Laps)

* Provisional results

https://www.formula1.com/en/results.html/2022/races/1136/mexico/race-result.html

Click here for the 2022 Formula 1 World Driver’s (Top 10) and Constructors Championship Standings.

The penultimate round of the 2022 FIA Formula One World Championship returns to the famous Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace (Interlagos) in Sao Paulo, Brazil for the Formula 1 Grande Premio Dos Brazil 2022 from Friday November 11-Sunday November 13.

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