A recap of the 2024 Mexico City Grand Prix.
Last time Formula One was in Mexico a lot of things were different. Home hero Checo Perez was on the grid, turn one chaos, and most prominently, Carlos Sainz won in the scarlet Ferrari. Be prepared to take yourself back in time to the 2024 Mexico City Grand Prix.
Immediately starting out the race there was a collision in the infamous turn one, later ruled by the FiA as a racing incident, between Alex Albon, Yuki Tsunoda, and Pierre Gasly. Continuing the ruckus of lap one and getting race positions set, Carlos Sainz went for the inner line into turn two to get the race leader position from Max Verstappen which was not successful, leading Carlos to go off the track gaining first place, of which Sainz quickly gave track position back to Verstappen to avoid FiA ruling down the line. After finding that the Ferrari had good pace, Sainz eventually overtook for the lead position in lap nine.
As Sainz started to build his gap in the front of the pack behind him Lando Norris and Max Verstappen started their on track battles. Going into the grand prix weekend tensions had already been high between the two drivers with both of them fighting for the World Drivers Championship, which Verstappen later took at the Las Vegas Grand Prix. Norris dove into the corners to overtake Verstappen and Verstappen kept his elbows out, pushing Norris off of the track. This back and forth battle between Norris and Verstappen kept going throughout the majority of the race, with Verstappen repeatedly pushing Norris off the track. Verstappen’s illegal racing technique led him to get a twenty second penalty, which he later served. The penalty is not the only thing that kept Verstappen from a step on the podium, it was also smart driving from Charles Leclerc in the second Ferrari. As Norris and Verstappen were focused on their own battles and position Leclerc took advantage of the preoccupation and overtook them into a podium position, costing both the McLaren driver and the RedBull driver.
As there is major focus on the four top runners the two Mercedes drivers, George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, had their own wheel to wheel battles in which George Russell first took the upper hand. Further on in the race Hamilton will retake Russell in the last five laps after ten desperate push laps to catch up to his teammate.
Still just catching the pace of things in the early middle section of the race a lot happens all in a very short time frame. On lap sixteen Fernando Alonso had to retire his car because of a brake issue on his four-hundredth grand prix weekend, a time that should’ve been for celebration. Only two laps after Alonso’s retirement Perez is heard over radio expressing his frustrations about his attempts to overtake Liam Lawson and the racing techniques Lawson was employing. Perez does not get to catch a breather because on lap nineteen he has an on track battle with Lance Stroll in which Perez does not give room and pushes Stroll off track, keeping his elbows out. Racing continued as normal throughout the middle section of the grand prix, with clean overtakes and Verstappen’s long stop to serve his penalty, until Leclerc’s slip up in the culminating stretch.
Lap sixty-three Charles Leclerc had a fatal slip up in the last corner which allowed Norris to pass through and into second place. Leclerc lost grip and ran off track just before the grid markers, costing him second but still being able to recover the incident and join the track in third. Leclerc’s mistake could’ve ended his race but he was able to show great control over the Ferrari and quickly correct the trajectory from the loss of traction before meeting the barriers. Bad traction is fairly common in the Mexico City Grand Prix, partially due to the high altitude of the track (around 7,350 feet above sea level) which can lead to overinflation of the tyres, and thus poor grip. It is something that is expected yearly as seen this year in Free Practice Three where multiple drivers, such as George Russell and Lance Stroll, were heard over the radio notifying their engineers of the issues with traction.
To finish out the grand prix there was one slight issue between two of the midfielders and the world got to watch as Sainz won the Mexican Grand Prix with Ferrari, his last race win in scarlet red. Contact was made between Franco Colapinto and Liam Lawson in which Colapinto clipped Lawson’s front wing at turn twelve in an attempt to take the inside line after just coming out of the third DRS zone. Not much more action at the front of the field after Leclerc’s incident, which brought clear podium finishers.
Crossing the line and the first to see the chequered flag was Carlos Sainz with Ferrari, the last time he would win a grand prix with the team, second came Lando Norris in the McLaren, his twelfth podium of the season but not his last, and in third, Charles Leclerc to bring home another Ferrari double podium of the season, the fourth out of five total. Both of the Ferrari drivers, and thus the team, had a very strong start to the Americas triple header with double podiums at the United States Grand Prix, where Leclerc won with Sainz to take second to give the team an one-two, and the Mexico City Grand Prix, the first two races of the Americas triple header.