The Mexican Grand Prix leaves few technical insights into the race and strategies. After the particular situation of qualifying, in the race the values on the field are, for everyone, back to what they had guessed from the pre-race analyzes. RedBull absolutely the car to beat, thanks mainly to a maximum load superior to Mercedes. In the Mexico City altitude conditions, the Newey setting does not generate particular balance problems (apart from a few minutes in qualifying). Verstappen makes life easier leaving with the complicity of Bottas and with the braking of turn 1, leaving for a triumphal ride for which the others will see him again only on the podium.
Hamilton still makes a great race, but with a clearly lower half the seven-time world champion can do little to attack, and second place, although disappointing in terms of the championship, is still a half victory. Remains holding on tooth and nail in the eighth Lewis title, but with 4 races to go things are now starting to get complicated in a more serious way. Hamilton it is not demeritating given his performance in the race, but many factors for now do not turn in the English direction. From the team’s strategies that are not always impeccable to contingent situations such as the pole lost on Saturday, which went to a Bottas who found himself inspired and with a cooler engine, which precluded Lewis from starting on the clean side and directly ahead of Verstappen, leaving his teammate in that role with the results we have all seen. On the other hand Max, is continuing to perform at a very high level every Sunday, and only the best Lewis and the best Mercedes can hope to win this beautiful battle. With the balance so tight however, everything changes quickly, we saw it in Saturday’s qualifying, so it is forbidden to write the final word on the world championship before it is really finished.
Behind the leading duo we find not so surprising a excellent Pierre Gasly with her Alpha Tauri. It had already been seen since Friday that the Frenchman could put the Ferraris in difficulty, and rather than put them in difficulty he has them jokes on the field without appeal. The Alpha Tauri deriving from the Red Bulls of the past years with the Honda Power Unit proves to be very strong on the Mexican circuit and particularly balanced when the vertical load in absolute value it is low (we remind you that despite the set-ups at maximum load the downforce generated by the cars in Mexico City is roughly the same if not lower than that expressed in Monza). Gasly starts clean, stays out of trouble and then handles comfortably the advantage over Leclerc, opening the gap in the first stint and then going for a walk during the second while behind the Ferrari drivers they swapped and swapped positions. In this regard, going down this time in personal opinions, the behavior of Ferrari was so great politically correct to be “cloying”. The strategy developed in the pre-race was to first stop one of the two drivers to stop Gasly and make the other go along to create rubber difference at the end of the race. From the chaos of the incident at the start, Leclerc came out in front and he was stopped first, but on the hard rubber his SF21 showed a huge amount of problems, including graining, instability and so on. Sainz for its part it has handled very well both the medium tire (moreover remaining at a safe distance from Leclerc even though perhaps having more) that then that lasts with perfect turns of attack that have not in the least damaged the surface of the tire or generated graining.
At that point the Spaniard started to run on average half a second per turn faster than Leclerc and after the exchange of positions he gained on the Monegasque over 7 seconds in 11 laps. Not that you want to make sterile controversy on aspects that matter little at the moment, but considering that Leclerc overall had a complicated weekend, that Sainz was ahead of him in qualifying and that in the race the Spaniard has shown that he has more, if Maranello had let Sainz hold the position, he would not have made no injustice. That said, the Ferrari performance was certainly not exciting. The conditions in Mexico City highlighted the aerodynamic difficulties of the package leaving the Ferrari duo more than 1 second per lap from the best and unable to seriously worry the Alpha Tauri. Sure there McLaren did worse on this occasion (to underline the bad mistake by Ricciardo that throws points and a golden internal opportunity to the wind), but it is difficult to understand where that wind came from so optimistic which animated the interviews of the Maranello technicians before the Mexican weekend. Sure there Power Unit proved to work well, especially at high revs with top speed among the highest for the Ferrari duo, but overall the car showed its own congenital limits. It is actually wrong to be surprised: the SF21 is the same since mid-season and one cannot hope that by magic he gains a second per lap over his rivals. However, the impression is that in Maranello we are trying to grow as much as possible in parallel across all departments. In fact the car has one “average” performance a little in all the circuits, and this means that he is earning third place in the constructors’ standings without ever excelling in any particular field (this is why in rotation the others in particular conditions win, but then they are behind in the standings). For the future it is certainly right to aim to have the best in every department, so it will be necessary to see if in 2022 the car will represent a sum of excellence to be able to play something important. In the meantime, it is right that the redhead tries to have at least one podium between now and the end of the year, a mission not impossible, as long as something happens in front of it.
A final word, even here in the field of personal opinion, goes to “chance Giovinazzi“. Honestly, it’s hard to understand the team’s attitude. Nobody has the obligation to contract any driver, and a team is free to send away even a world champion if they want, so Antonio’s continuous pseudo-sabotage of the races, combined with a certain disrespect that begins to emerge. in radio communications it is difficult to understand. In fact, Alfa Sauber is doing a spite to itself in order to do it to the Italian driver for no reason other than pure masochism.
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