Verstappen Strengthens Title Bid With Dominant Win In Mexico
Calum Gill 21:24 07/11/2021
Max Verstappen stretched his Formula 1 world championship lead by dominating the Mexican Grand Prix, as his Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez narrowly failed to deprive Lewis Hamilton of second.
Verstappen had surged down the outside of the front-row-starting Mercedes into Turn 1 on the opening lap, braking later and instantly sweeping into the lead. Polesitter Valtteri Bottas looked set to fall into third behind Hamilton, but was tapped into a mid-corner spin by seventh-place starter Daniel Ricciardo - who was passing his Perez down the inside on the dusty line. The ensuing traffic chaos triggered by Bottas spinning in front of the pack led to Yuki Tsunoda and Mick Schumacher sandwiching Esteban Ocon and both sustaining race-ending damage, though the Alpine they had both bounced over continued.
After a four-lap safety car period, Verstappen simply stormed away. By lap 20 he was 8 seconds clear of Hamilton, who could not shake Perez off. Mercedes brought Hamilton in for his sole pitstop long before the two Red Bulls in the hope of gaining an undercut advantage. While that made no difference to Verstappen’s comfortable margin, Red Bull responded by extending Perez’s first stint so that he came in a full 10 laps later than Hamilton.
That long run on older tyres dropped Perez 8 seconds away from the Mercedes by the time he rejoined, but the hope was he could hunt down Hamilton on his fresher tyres. Sure enough, Perez caught Hamilton with 10 laps to go. Despite his best efforts, and amid various traffic headaches, the home favourite couldn’t quite make it a Red Bull 1-2. Verstappen’s points lead is now up to 19 as he was denied a fastest lap point by Mercedes bringing in the delayed Bottas (who had made little progress from the back after his spin then had a poor second scheduled pitstop) for two extra pitstops for fresh tyres late on so he could deny Verstappen that bonus point.
Bottas’s first effort to take fastest lap was ironically denied when he came across Verstappen on track. The second attempt finally proved successful on the last lap. Pierre Gasly spent most of the race in a comfortable fourth for AlphaTauri, but did have to be wary of the closing Carlos Sainz late on. The Ferrari driver had left his sole pitstop very late and was charging on fresh tyres, being let through by teammate Charles Leclerc along the way. They swapped places back as it became clear Sainz wouldn’t catch Gasly.
Ferrari’s fifth and sixth places meant it swept past McLaren into third in the constructors’ championship as its rival only scored one point for Lando Norris’s 10th place - achieved from 18th on the grid. Ricciardo smashed his front wing hitting Bottas and could only recover to 12th. Sebastian Vettel took Aston Martin’s best result in nearly two months with seventh, while Kimi Raikkonen’s eighth place ahead of Fernando Alonso’s Alpine was Alfa Romeo’s highest finish all season.
Raikkonen’s team-mate Antonio Giovinazzi looked like he would be Alfa’s hero as he emerged from the first-corner mess sixth, but pitting too early for his sole stop left him in the midfield and he finished 11th. George Russell and Nikita Mazepin had also leapt forward through the lap one chaos and briefly ran ninth and 11th for Williams and Haas. That proved unsustainable and they fell back to 16th and 18th respectively by the finish.
