John N
Max Verstappen claimed his 14th victory of the 2022 season in the Mexico City Grand Prix, ahead of Mercedes rival Lewis Hamilton and Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez, after an intriguing strategic battle played out at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
Max Verstappen has now secured his place as the most successful F1 driver in a single season. His win at the Hungarian Grand Prix moved him one clear of Michael Schumacher (2004) and Sebastian Vettel (2013).
He's too good! 💪#MexicoGP @Max33Verstappen pic.twitter.com/9gaFmN1oJ4
— Formula 1 (@F1) October 30, 2022
Verstappen’s Red Bull team started their race on medium tyres, leaving their rivals with the choice of hard or softs. Mercedes swapped their starting set of tyres for faster ones, which left Hamilton questioning why they did so. Perez gave the home fans something to cheer about in third, having threatened Hamilton late on; Russell – who lost out to his teammate at the start – took fourth place.
Russell was also unhappy with his strategy, repeatedly asking Mercedes to pit again and ditch the hard tyres, which failed to bring the race back to the Silver Arrows in the closing stages – a stop for softs with two laps to run, at least yielding the fastest lap.
Tsunoda gets squeezed by Ricciardo and bounced out of the race 💥😮#MexicoGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/uw8xRTrLFk
— Formula 1 (@F1) October 30, 2022
Ferrari endured a lacklustre race as Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc claimed lonely P5 and P6, finishing ahead of McLaren driver Daniel Ricciardo. The latter charged his way to seventh with soft tyres late on and kept the position despite a 10-second time penalty for a clash with Yuki Tsunoda. Esteban Ocon placed eighth after a painful late retirement for Alpine teammate Fernando Alonso, as the other McLaren of Lando Norris and Alfa Romeo’s Valtteri Bottas – not quite able to repeat his qualifying performance – completed the points.
AlphaTauri driver Pierre Gasly picked up a five-second penalty for an early, aggressive move on Aston Martin rival Lance Stroll and ultimately missed out on a point by just half a second, with Alex Albon 12th for Williams.
Zhou Guanyu got his Alfa Romeo to the line ahead of Aston Martin pair Vettel – sporting a touching tribute helmet to the late Dietrich Mateschitz – and Stroll, followed by the Haas cars of Mick Schumacher and Kevin Magnussen.
Williams driver Nicholas Latifi was the final finisher, with Alonso, as mentioned earlier, grinding to a halt with an engine issue late on and Tsunoda retiring after briefly going airborne in his collision with Ricciardo.
