The Saturday in F1 Mexico GP was quite dramatic in the end where Mercedes triumphed over Red Bull in late stages of the qualifying.
The Saturday in F1 Mexico GP had its twist and turns where the ‘seemingly’ underdogs of the weekend – Mercedes – ended up on top with a 1-2 finish. It was Valtteri Bottas with the last laugh ahead of teammate Lewis Hamilton as Red Bull were only third and fourth.
It was neck and neck in Q1 and Q2, but it changed course in Q3 where the first lap from Max Verstappen wasn’t good enough. The second lap then got ruined after Sergio Perez got distracted due to the off from Yuki Tsunoda, which left the Dutchman in third.
It is still a respectable position to start directly behind their F1 rivals and they also have AlphaTauri’s Pierre Gasly in the mix to aide them. It will still be hefty battle between the championship contenders on a dusty circuit.
Bottas: “I definitely surprised myself and I think our performance as a team we seemed to be a little bit off, especially on a single lap, against Red Bull, so I would say yeah, the performance in Q3 was a bit of a surprise but it was a good lap. I think we managed to optimise the set-up since practice three this morning and also everything with the tyre temperatures, out laps, managed to get everything near perfection and that was the result, so obviously really rewarding. Second run in Q3, it wasn’t too bad. I think I was more or less zero on my time before Sector Three but just had a bit more rear overheating so lost a bit of traction in the final sector.
“I think I obviously tried to shave-off any time I had compared to the first run and had to push a bit more maybe in places and it wasn’t rewarding then in the last sector. I think at least what we saw from the long runs in practice we seem pretty similar to Red Bull. I think it’s going to be difficult at the start of the race no doubt because obviously it’s good that we have both cars on the front row but they are right behind us. They have a big tow into Turn 1 so it could be an interesting beginning of the race and we need to figure out how to stay in front.”
Hamilton: “That lap from Valtteri, I couldn’t really match it and we came into this weekend from P1 onwards, we’ve generally been behind by around half a second, so through the whole weekend just working away at trying to improve the car, extract as much as we can from it, but knowing that they have generally got higher downforce than us. They have a bit of a bigger wing that they use in places like Monaco. So we’ve struggled in certain parts of the track so it’s a real surprise and a shock to us to see that we are on the front row. I don’t really have an answer for it but I’ll take it for sure and really grateful to be up there with Valtteri, for the team, to get a one-two. We very rarely change set-ups before qualifying. It was small tweaks. To be honest I really struggled. I didn’t really like the set-up of the car today. It was good in P3 but I struggled with it in qualifying.”
Verstappen: “I mean that’s always ‘if’, right? But before that we were struggling somehow with just getting the tyre to work. On the Mediums, it wasn’t too bad but then on the Softs, going into Q3, it just didn’t click in the first run. It just was a terrible lap. Just no grip. So, I knew of course there was a lot more in it, if we could find a better balance with the tyres. And it was a little bit better in the final run. And it was definitely on, you know, for a good lap and you know, challenge Valtteri’s time. But I don’t know what happened in front of me, but it must have been Yuki holding up first Checo and then both of them, of course, had to go wide and then I thought, you know because you arrive so quick it’s difficult to pinpoint what’s happening.
“I just saw a lot of dust, so I thought a car crashed and you know now with the yellow flag rules, I’ve been caught with that already here in Mexico, I backed out of it a bit and then no yellow flag came so I continued pushing but of course that’s already like two-and-a-half tenths gone. So, my lap was basically finished. What can you do? I’ll have a look at what happened there exactly – but of course it was very unfortunate and not a great place to be after being so competitive the whole weekend but still, like Valtteri said, it’s also a long run to Turn One. Starting third, normally on the cleaner side, there’s been a lot of dust, so let’s see. It’s a, you know, long race.
“Talking about the whole session, I think the start of Q1 it was good. Even Q2 I mean it was alright. Yeah. We’ll have to check the out-laps and stuff and of course, yeah, between the first run and the second run in Q3 already there was a bit of a difference as well. So yeah, a few things to analyse. But overall, of course not great. As for the rear wings, they were cracked after FP3 so we had to patch them up and basically they were like new to start qualifying, so I don’t think that had anything to do with it – but of course we’ll have a look into it again.”
Perez: “It was a pretty difficult one. Trying to manage traffic, trying to get a rhythm, the balance. I think my car was never the same since FP3 to qualifying. We had to do a couple of adjustments and once we got on top of it, all of a sudden, I find Yuki into Turn 11 and I lost a lot of downforce already into Turns 8, 9, and that hurt a bit. The distraction was down to the fact that I was too close to him on braking. Once I braked there was no downforce and I just lost it. I think P3 was possible, but the Mercedes were too quick.”
Behind the top runners, Gasly led the other pace which had Ferrari and McLaren too. The Frenchman did get the help from Tsunoda, while Daniel Ricciardo was towed from Lando Norris. The Ferrari duo did not have a plan of tow it seemed but Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz switched places from first run to second in the standings.
It was Leclerc ahead after first run but Sainz managed to beat him and Ricciardo in his second lap. The biggest talking point was certainly about Tsunoda, where Red Bull chief Christian Horner noted that they got ‘Tsunoda’d’ which pushed the Japanese driver to be defensive about his move where his boss Franz Tost came to his aide too.
Tsunoda: “I went outside and I couldn’t do anything more than that one. I mean, I don’t know, where should I go there? If I had another chance I’d do the same thing. I don’t know what should I do? Do you think I did wrong thing? My main goal for qualifying was to help my team mate, due to the penalty I’ll have for tomorrow’s race, and I think as a team we did a really good job as we continue our fight for fifth in the championship. I think we’ve shown that the pace is there this weekend, so I’m aiming to make my way forward tomorrow in the race and looking towards the points.”
Sainz: “The final result is not bad, but we expected to be in front of Gasly. He had a tow, he was playing a bit of games with Tsunoda. After FP3 I felt really confident and all of a sudden, I lost the rhythm in qualifying. It’s been an eventful qualifying for me. From the start of Q1, I managed to do a very good lap and then I struggled with an engine issue at the exit of the pits. Then it was very difficult to get into a rhythm. I didn’t do a clean lap until Q3, and even the Q3 lap, because I was lacking a bit of rhythm, it was nothing special so I’m a bit surprised to see me up there in P6.”
Ricciardo: “It’s a little bittersweet because obviously Carlos is two-milliseconds in front, but to split the Ferraris is not too bad around here. We worked as a team well, with Lando giving me some help. I think the clean side of the grid should be OK tomorrow. I made a little mistake in Turn 13 which I think cost me sixth but the clean side of the grid isn’t a bad offset, so we’ll work with that. We did make improvements going into today, yesterday was tricky as we missed a lot of running. We hit the ground running and I think we have to be fairly pleased with P7. We’ll try to get a couple off the start tomorrow.”
Outside the Top 10, there were some less happy campaigners, especially the Aston Martin and Alpine F1 drivers. Their mishap helped Alfa Romeo duo to be ahead, even though a late spin for Antonio Giovinazzi did cost Esteban Ocon some time. The biggest to miss out were Sebastian Vettel and Fernando Alonso, both getting knocked out in Q2 and Q1, respectively.
The former wasn’t too displeased of missing out but noted that he had a tear-off stuck to his rear wing in his first Q2 run. At the same time, the latter just couldn’t get clean laps together after the red flag period. And it seemed like that Alpine’s tow plan didn’t work out as well, leaving the Spaniard out in Q1 where Ocon made it in Q2.
In terms of Lance Stroll and Antonio Giovnazzi, the former put down his crash to lack of grip, while the latter locked his rears for his spin. There was also some radio dramas at Haas, where Nikita Mazepin felt it was a similar situation to Zandvoort but with different outcome.
Alonso: “It’s not a good result for us today and it’s disappointing to see both cars finish outside of the top ten. We made some changes before qualifying but ultimately, I think my laps today could have been better. Before the red flag was waved, I was looking quite strong and I was happy with my lap, so it’s a shame that we got caught out by that. Then I couldn’t get a clean lap together in our two attempts on the one set of softs and we dropped out of qualifying. We start 12th tomorrow so it’s a bit better than the result showed after Q1 and I think it’ll be an interesting race. Let’s see what we can do as I believe points are still very possible.”
Stroll: “I am okay. I was a little bit too wide at the final corner, it was a bit dirty out there, and I lost the car at the exit due to a lack of grip. It is a big job for the team and the mechanics [to repair], so it is a shame. I wanted to see what we could do in qualifying and see how the car felt, even though we were set to start at the back of the grid anyway. We will do our best to work our way up the field in the race and gain some places tomorrow.”
Giovinazzi: “Another battle for the grid in which I feel we were very close to a place in Q3. P11 would have been possible but in the end we didn’t manage it: in my final lap, I locked the rears under braking – up until that moment, the lap wasn’t too bad. We’ll see what we can do from where we start: it will be a long race, especially considering the tyre degradation we are expecting, but if we have a clean race we can have a good shout for the points.”
Schumacher: “From our side, everything happened as normal and as planned. The Williams were there, but they were doing a faster outlap than we were planning on. We just did our normal outlap. The team set out clear instructions and I think that the instructions were held from both sides – from him and as well from my side. So I think there’s no real reason to be upset.”
Mazepin: “We had a lengthy red flag, which made us have an opportunity to go down in the fast lane and wait there so that we keep our track position. We’ve gone down there with about two-and-a-half minutes ago. That means that you’re sitting there without the blankets, where you lose heat that you have put into these tyres. When we get out there, I knew that those cars that were behind me sitting in the pits will need to be pushing to get that temperature into their tyres and I also need to get the same tyre temperature in.
“When I saw my team-mate very early in the lap, Turn 4, not doing the same, I thought that maybe the temperatures that he wants to start with are lower and therefore because we’re so early in the lap, like he said in the previous event in the Netherlands, we could have changed positions. And there he was given a green light, where I’ve been given a red light. So not a big deal there. It’s one of those things. I work for this team and if you don’t ask, you don’t know. But you need to pick your battles, so I didn’t let that get to me in any way. So I just made a clean lap and then unfortunately, I attacked too much the last corner and we’ve seen that can catch drivers out, so I lost a few tenths there but I thought that was good.”
Steiner: “We discussed it after Zandvoort and we decided that we stick with what we are doing. In the end, Nikita finds himself in a better position than Mick because he had no traffic on his lap, and his tyres were up to temperature anyway. He asked the question, but the drivers don’t see what is in front because he maybe can go past Mick and then he’s stuck again. So why would we do it because then the risk is always that they race between them again like in Zandvoort? So we stop it before it goes to that. And that is the clear instructions we gave after Zandvoort. We have the whole field under control, we see them all in front and we see how many cars are in front. We know where you’re going to end up on your quali lap and if you race over the start finish line, you mess a lap up. That is the way to deal with it and in the end it worked out good for both of them because we know what we are doing. I think it takes a bit of time, but they understand it.”
Here’s the Q3 moment: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2021-mexico-city-gp-qualifying-perez-runs-into-trouble-during-q3-in-mexico.1715716601052876962.html
Here’s Lance Stroll’s crash: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2021-mexico-city-gp-qualifying-stroll-hits-barrier-hard-in-q1.1715711258192063995.html
Here’s the radio call from Haas: https://www.formula1.com/en/latest/video.2021-mexico-city-gp-qualifying-mazepins-heated-radio-exchange-with-garage.1715713257161734026.html
Here’s how F1 Mexico GP qualifying panned out