Verstappen captured his 16th grand prix victory of 2023 in Mexico City
Red Bull
Max Verstappen could probably have won this race any number of ways. But his route to a Prost-equalling career number 51 victory was actually made quite straightforward by outside events. Team mate Sergio Perez – who’d been only 0.15 seconds off Verstappen’s pace in qualifying and with a very comparable race simulation run on Friday – went off at the first turn, trying to squeeze into the lead and taking flight over Charles Leclerc’s wheel. The second Red Bull was fatally damaged and Verstappen’s challenge was instantly reduced – but he still had one. Though the Red Bull was comfortably the quickest car – Ferrari front row lock-out notwithstanding – Verstappen was committed to a slower strategy.
Red Bull had committed right at the start of the weekend to a two-stop even though theoretically the one-stop was slightly faster. They just felt it was a safer option, given how suddenly the track temperature can change, and safe in the knowledge that even if it was slightly slower in theory, their car could overcome any difference, given that the numbers said the two strategies were only around six seconds apart. Verstappen was very keen that they run the race this way, accepting that he might lose track position and have to overtake, and the team agreed. Accordingly, Verstappen didn’t use either of the allocated two sets of hard tyres and so took those into the race in addition to his single new set of mediums. Perez saved a set of mediums in addition to a single set of hards. Everyone else in the top ten on the grid, intending to one-stop, took just a single set of mediums and hards each. Red Bull’s pace had allowed it the luxury of a more sparing use of the two favoured compounds.
Verstappen was ahead of the field by Turn 1, and never looked back
Red Bull
So what we were witnessing in the race’s early stages as Verstappen pulled out around three seconds on Leclerc (who was running without a front wing endplate from the Perez contact) was a two-stop vs one-stop contest for the win. Verstappen had that gap out to just under five seconds by the time he made his first stop on lap 19. Leclerc ran for another 12 laps before making what was set to be his only stop. He rejoined 16.5 seconds behind, but with Verstappen’s extra pitstop set to cost him around 21 seconds. On that strategy Verstappen would have been set to run to around lap 45 (of 71) before making his second stop. Would he have been able to extend that 16.5 second lead to 21 seconds or more within 14 laps or so (around 0.32 seconds per lap)? No, it doesn’t look like it, given their pace comparison in the first stint (when Verstappen averaged only 0.25 seconds faster). Who knows, perhaps he was being extra conservative in stint one and could have turned on the required extra pace. Or, he could have come out behind and had to overtake the Ferrari on track.
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Verstappen was spared that by a red flag half-way through the race, as Kevin Magnussen had crashed his Haas heavily at Turn 9 from a suspected rear suspension breakage. Before the red flag, there was a safety car and at the much-reduced loss to the field a pitstop costs then, Verstappen was able to pit for his second set of new hards and exit still leading. The red flag made this smart move superfluous, as everyone was allowed to change tyres anyway. What it also did was destroy the strategy battle. Everyone would restart on what they considered their best available tyres and run to the end on them. So Verstappen simply disappeared into the distance without having to worry about anything strategic.
For the restart, Mercedes decided to fit Lewis Hamilton (starting third, having undercut past Carlos Sainz in the first stint) and George Russell (starting seventh) with mediums while Ferrari opted for hards for Leclerc and Sainz. Logically, the hard was the better tyre over a 36-lap stint, calculated to be faster after five laps and more than making up its initial loss. There was also a wear concern about getting the medium to run that long. It was a gamble. But as it turned out, the medium was all upside, faster initially and faster over the stint. It allowed Hamilton to track and pass Leclerc – with a committed one wheel on the grass move — and pull out a distance on him. It allowed Russell to pass Daniel Ricciardo and Oscar Piastri off the restart grid and apply pressure to Sainz. Everyone’s pace was so constrained by keeping the brakes and power units from overheating – drivers were lift-and-coasting up to 200 metres before the corners – that the tyre temperatures ended up not being the limiting factor. Especially as the track began to steadily cool in the late afternoon.
Despite qualifying behind, superior race pace and strategy saw Hamilton pass and finish ahead of both Ferraris
Getty Images
Well, almost everyone. Piastri is still struggling to master the art of tyre conservation in his rookie season and he took too much out of them initially. It was McLaren teammate Lando Norris – who’d started 18th and restarted from 15th, having pitted just before the K-Mag crash – who was about to star. In a race where everyone was struggling to keep their brakes from overheating, he proceeded to pick off nine cars plus Piastri who allowed him past under team orders. He forced Russell wide out of Turn 5 and dived ahead into the next turn to take fifth place, running out of laps to catch Sainz. It was an incredible performance, one which suggested he’d have been racing with Hamilton had he not made an error in qualifying which saw him go out in Q1. Piastri was a subdued eighth, from Alex Albon’s Williams and Esteban Ocon’s Alpine.
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Ricciardo was another to star. Having qualified the AlphaTauri fourth, which flattered the car only a little, he raced it to seventh, snapping at Russell’s tail for the last few laps.
At one point, Hamilton thought about seeing if he could catch Verstappen. “I thought, ok, I think I’ve saved enough, let me see if I can try and close this gap to Max. It was like 10 laps to go, and I did a 22.0 and Max did a 21.9. I was like, ah, I’ll leave it. He was just cruising at 21.9. So yeah, so I thought I’d leave it there. And also, I had to be cautious, just careful because obviously my tyres could have opened up and then Charles might have caught me.”
Leclerc had other issues on his mind, with extreme lift-and-coasting necessary in the late stages. Without the red flag he’d likely have been second. “It’s a very peaky car,” he said of his pole-setting Ferrari, “and whenever we get out of the optimal window of the car, we are losing too much time. And that’s exactly what happened on the hard tyre. At first, I thought I could do quite a good job once we stopped. But then there was a red flag, the tyres cooled down, we went back out and the feeling was just not the same and I couldn’t find the feeling again with the tyres.”
The crowd was significantly smaller by the end than at the beginning, but at least those who stayed witnessed some genuinely good racing.
