Reviewing and Analysing the 2022 F1 Mexico GP which had the sub – 2 second pitstop, a Ricciardo drive, some battles, and posed some strategy questions.
Not the most eventful of races but it still had movers up and down the grid behind a subdued racing position in the front with a hold on position for all 4 leaders after the first lap and no major challenges made except, he small threat from Perez closing in on Hamilton. Down the grid, there was the Ricciardo return after his optimistic move on Tsunoda and also fights by Bottas and Ocon salvage points for themselves while Ferrari had a quiet race.
Ferarri were ready for a less exciting race for them with a known performance gap in the Mexico City conditions for them which was witnessed very evidently in the Qualifying as Ferrari qualified 5th and 7th with Leclerc being outqualified by Bottas in 6th position. At the front, it seemed an exciting race was being set – up as a Mercedes sandwich formed with the two Rec Bulls sandwiching them – Verstappen followed by Russell and then the two others.
Come the race start, the exciting prospect expected was witnessed. the two Red – Bull cars were on soft tyres, having better grip and launch off the line as compared to the Silver Arrows on the mediums. Russell was ahead of Hamilton but Hamilton had a slightly better start and drove with more confidence and into the first few turns seeing him get the advantage over his new teammate by the third corner. Verstappen had not had a special start but with noone to fight, by the straight before the 4th turn, he had started stretching a proper gap with Hamilton in pursuit.
Behind Bottas in his Alfa, which had issues with getting off the line throughout the season as it lacked that initial acceleration and launch, slipped back and lost more than a couple of positions. This saw the Ferrari’s now sit together in P5 and P6 with Russell who was now in P4 after going wide in Turn 3, having a healthy gap back to the pair and already a lead pack of 4 was separated from the rest.
In the front, the pursuit was not exactly hot, but it was very warm as Hamilton was able to stay very close to Verstappen hovering around the mark of a gap of 1 – 2 seconds. There was a constant exchange of each driver going fastest in one of the sectors but Verstappen almost consistently held an advantage in the 3rd Sector which saw Hamilton not come into the DRS range. Hamilton had higher top speed at the end of straights consistently for a few laps as compared to Verstappen with these two already a step ahead of Perez and Russell who even though weren’t slower to the front two, were losing time to them.
The first pitstop took place at the start of Lap 18 for Lance Stroll, who was struggling a lot on his Medium tyres with the setup of the car not being very good with downforce and grip already. His pitstop saw a change of tyres not to the harder compound but the soft compound which even on high fuel had been strong for those two had used those as their starting compound. It had lasted relatively healthily long. This already put him n a two – stop strategy at a minimum. The next pitstop wouldn’t happen until Lap 24. 6 laps after that is and this is when the soft tyre runners decided they had to start pitting, to firstly change the tyres that were reaching end of their healthy life after having lasted about 4 – 5 laps longer than some would have thought initially (about 20 – 25% longer), and to also undercut their opponents on fresher tyres. The tyres that go on would have to last till the ed of Lap 71 to execute a one – stop race, and all tyres held up very weel even when drivers pushed on them for a couple of laps early on.
Perez had a slow pitstop and then Verstappen who had some graining seemingly pitted and then went onto the medium tyres. Ideally, Mercedes would wait quite a few more laps before pitting onto the softs, but they boxed Lewis on Lap 30, 4 laps after Verstappen and had to then go to the hard compound as by rules they have to use two different compounds in a race and a soft tyre set wouldn’t last 41 laps in a good enough condition to have a chance of winning the race. An issue they faced was that even though they were setting devent laptimes, the old mediums were not working well for them as compared to the new mediums for the Red Bulls, and with them seeing some degradation on the tyres, seemingly a fear of being unable to overtakew the Red Bulls with their pace advantage which wasn’t a lot in Mexico, struck them atleast with Hamilton and then later with Russell to cover all bases, and on their data there degradation was bad in the first stint which would have also led to the belief that Red Bull would also suffer from the same later on. No split – strategy which could have seen atleast one car even possibly try a two – stop with nothing much lose at the end.
The Mediums were strong especially as the Red Bull cars did not overwork them and even with Perez making some challenges and settling in for P3, all 3 drivers in the front were very consistent with their laptimes with Verstappen’s mediums being maintained such that his laptimes did not drop even towards the end suggesting that seeing the time loss, he did choose to manage his tyres a bit at the start and not push as much.
The other drivers had a very simple race with a couple of very well setup overtakes that showed their skills. The simple yet well set overtakes were made more interesting by how the maneuvers were made in order to stay within track limits and accelerate off into the short straights with even the straight before the stadium section now having DRS – a zone where Perez came close t Hamilton quite a few times but nothing happened. Hamilton posted the fastest Sector 3 time split of then on Lap 33 but by Lap 46 had a gap of 10+ seconds to Verstappen.
Ricciardo, after his optimistic move on Tsunoda that led to an unfortunate incident for Tsunoda.
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