Mexico GP
Race 20 Summary
October 30, 2022
Verstappen, Hamilton, and Perez finished 1, 2, and 3 in the * checks notes * 2022 Mexico Grand Prix. Crazy what a difference a year makes…
My husband and I were attempting to hurry home to make it back for the start of the GP. We had to drive about 2 hours from my sister’s after dog sitting all weekend, and fortunately we made it back with like 10 minutes to spare.
This race had the promise to be really exciting. Max Verstappen on pole with George and Lewis behind him in P2 and P3 respectively. The Mercs looked competitive in Austin just one week before, which saw Lewis nearly earn his first win of the season. In typical Mercedes fashion, they started both drivers on the medium compound, while both Red Bulls and Ferraris were on the softs. The hope was that the softs would have high deg and the mediums could go longer, but that would not be the case.
George and Lewis both got great starts behind Max Verstappen, and were racing through the first few turns. Perez was right on their tails, and putting the pressure on. In some tight (and impressive) racing, Lewis managed to get alongside his teammate after George had a less than ideal line into one of the turns. After going slightly wide, George was passed by Lewis, and quickly under pressure by Perez and the 2 Ferraris. All while this is going on, Max begins to build his lead.
Unfortunately, the race at the front was decided by the tire choice at the start of the race. With high fuel, Mercedes could not make their Medium tires last as long as Red Bull could on their second stint with less fuel. With Lewis pitting on lap 30/71, it was too early to try soft tires, so hard tires to the end of the race was the only option. On lap 42, Lewis came over the radio and said “this tire isn’t good” when speaking of the hard tire, that after 12 laps should have been fired up. He wasn’t able to gain at all on Max in P1. Bono attempted to reassure his driver that the mediums dropped off at the end of their stint, so the hope was that the medium runners would struggle for pace at the end. Nearly 10 laps later, Lewis was still about the same amount of time behind Max (around 9-10 seconds). Elsewhere, George struggled to gain on Perez, but interestingly, was gaining time to the 2 Ferrari drivers behind him who were also on Medium tires. Lap 51 also saw the Daniel Ricciardo-Yuki Tsunoda incident, in which Daniel made a late lunge up the inside, making contact with Tsunoda, and ending the young Japanese driver’s race. Because Yuki was able to limp his car back to the pits, there was no need for a safety car. For the incident, Ricciardo was handed a 10 second penalty for causing the collision. I personally felt that the penalty was a bit harsh. Yuki could have left a little more room, and it might not have protected him enough because of Daniel’s move, but I don’t think Daniel’s actions were worth a 10 second penalty. With newly fitted soft tires, he had to do his best to maintain a 10 second lead to the cars behind him… or so we thought.
From lap 54 til the end was the Daniel Ricciardo show. One of the better drives he’s had in the past 2 years. He was aggressive and hungry, and managed to secure P7 after overtaking 4 cars and building an 11 second lead over P8.
Max cruised to yet another victory and a record-breaking one. He’s the first driver to win 14 races in a season, and people want to complain about Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes dominance. Say what you will, but they never did that. In fact, the drivers who Max beat for this achievement were Michael Schumacher with Ferrari and Sebastian Vettel with Red Bull- NOT Lewis Hamilton with Mercedes. Also, Max won by about the same time margin in 2022 (14-15 seconds) as he did in the 2021 Mexico GP (16.5 seconds), which is wild.
After all the talk of a grid shake up in 2022, we have a carbon copy podium in Mexico as we did in 2021. In fact, for fun- let’s compare the top 10.
2021
2022
If you substitute George Russell for Pierre Gasly, you have nearly identical top 6s. 1 Alpine? Check. 1 Alpha Romeo? Check. I mean the only thing that is shaken up is how easily Red Bull was able to win the drivers and constructors championships this year…
>SILVER ARROW POINTS
>I believe on Twitter my exact words were “Mercedes, Mercedes, Mercedes…” Coming off of Austin, I expected more. I was pretty disappointed with the strategy call. Would it have made a difference? Maybe or Maybe not, but the point is that I hoped you would have the same tenacity as you did in Austin.
With 2 more races to go, can Mercedes get their win? I’m not sure. Off to Sir Lewis Hamilton’s second home race!