Verstappen resets season win record to 16 at Mexico City GP

Max Verstappen has won a record-breaking 16th grand prix, easily beating Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc to victory at the Mexico City Grand Prix.

Verstappen got a great start to put himself immediately between the two Ferrari drivers firing from the front row, but teammate Sergio Perez’s launch was even better, powering past the top three on the left as they squabbled over rights to the apex.

Carlos Sainz dropped back to fourth, and Perez saw a chance to take the lead with a bold move around the outside of the first turn, but he tipped into the corner before clearing the Leclerc and Verstappen behind him.

The Mexican heavily clipped Leclerc’s front-left tire and front wing, launching his RB19 into the air and crashing down into the run-off. He was able to limp back to pit lane, but the damage to his car was too severe for him to resume his home race.

Verstappen used the collision to sprint to a 1.5s advantage at the end of the first lap, with Leclerc lagging behind with a damaged front wing.

An early first stop, on lap 19, earned the Dutchman an enormous tire advantage that put him more than 17s into the lead, but a mid-distance red flag wiped out all those gains when Kevin Magnussen wrote off his Haas through the esses.

The Dane’s car appeared to suffer a rear-right suspension failure over the curb at Turn 8, sending him spearing helplessly into the outside wall, where the brakes set themselves alight.

The race was suspended to collect the wreckage and repair the barriers, and a standing start was used to resume the race.

Despite starting on used hard tires, Verstappen had no trouble acing his getaway, comfortably covering Leclerc and galloping away to a cruisey 13s victory without needing another stop.

His 16th win breaks the record for most triumphs in a season, the previous benchmark having been set by him last season.

“We are experiencing an incredible season,” he said. “The pace of the car was very, very good.”

Lewis Hamilton had risen to third before the red flag, battling past Daniel Ricciardo and undercutting through Sainz, and Mercedes put him on a set of used medium tires at the restart to ensure he could break Leclerc’s defenses for second and get into some clear air.

It took him five laps to relieve the Monegasque of a runner-up finish, but on the delicate medium tire he was no match for Verstappen ahead, and he had to stoke the compound home to second place.

“To bounce back from a difficult weekend last weekend with the end result, this is really well done,” Hamilton said, referring to his disqualification from the United States Grand Prix. “I’m really proud of the team.”

He pinched the point for fastest lap on the final tour, slicing his deficit to Perez for second in the drivers championship to 20 points.

Ferrari had hoped the hard tires would outlast the mediums and bring the battle for second back to Leclerc, but the drop-off never materialized, leaving the Monegasque to bank the final podium place, down from pole position.

“We struggled a little bit with the hard at the restart,” Leclerc said. “Lewis was really quick on the medium and they managed to have really good degradation. They were just better today. It’s life.”

Sainz held fourth ahead of a surging Lando Norris, who recovered sensationally from 17th on the grid.

Norris gained substantially from an early first pit stop and then a cheap second tire change behind the safety car preceding the red flag to line up 10th on the restart grid, but a shocking launch dumped him to 14th at the end of the first green-flag lap.

On medium tires and with race pace that had been forecast to put him in victory contention on Friday, the Briton sliced his way up with a series of clinical overtakes, including a high-risk side-by-side pass on Ricciardo through the first chicane on lap 60 of 71.

He charged onto Russell’s gearbox and with five laps to go pressured the Mercedes driver into a mistake at Turn 4. Russell ran deep, handing Norris a better exit through Turn 5 and the racing line at Turn 6, ending a superb 12-place recovery.

George Russell defended sixth on aging tires ahead of Ricciardo, who drove an excellent race to seventh for AlphaTauri, the team’s best finish since last April’s Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix.

It should have been a sweeter result for AlphaTauri, who had Yuki Tsunoda on track for a big recovery from 18th. He was battling to pass Oscar Piastri in the second half of the race, but the Japanese driver appeared to run out of patience on lap 49, over-eagerly chopping the McLaren into the first turn to send himself spinning off the road and to the back of the pack.

Piastri waved Norris through on his charge but couldn’t follow his teammate up the order, leaving him eighth.

Alex Albon rose from 14th into the top 10 with a long first stint that took him to the safety car preceding the red flag, when a cheap tire change locked him into the points.

Esteban Ocon finished 10th with a move on Nico Hulkenberg with five laps to go, demoting the German out of the points in his 200th grand prix start.

* Provisional results. Note – Hamilton scored an additional point for setting the fastest lap of the race.

Story originally appeared on Racer