Verstappen resets season win record to 16 at Mexico City GP

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

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

Carlos Sainz dropped when to fourth, and Perez saw a endangerment to take the lead with a unvigilant move virtually the outside of the first turn, but he tipped into the corner surpassing transplanting the Leclerc and Verstappen overdue him.

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

Verstappen used the standoff to sprint to a 1.5s wholesomeness at the end of the first lap, with Leclerc lagging overdue with a damaged front wing.

An early first stop, on lap 19, earned the Dutchman an enormous tire wholesomeness that put him increasingly 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 prorogue 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 nonflexible tires, Verstappen had no trouble acing his getaway, comfortably tent Leclerc and galloping yonder to a cruisey 13s victory without needing flipside 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 surpassing the red flag, rival 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 unravel Leclerc’s defenses for second and get into some well-spoken air.

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

“To vellicate when 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 nonflexible tires would outlast the mediums and bring the wrestle for second when to Leclerc, but the drop-off never materialized, leaving the Monegasque to wall the final podium place, lanugo from pole position.

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

Sainz held fourth superiority 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 unseemly second tire transpiration overdue 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 machinations on lap 60 of 71.

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

George Russell secure sixth on white-haired tires superiority of Ricciardo, who crush an spanking-new race to seventh for AlphaTauri, the team’s weightier 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 rival to pass Oscar Piastri in the second half of the race, but the Japanese suburbanite 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 when of the pack.

Piastri waved Norris through on his tuition 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 unseemly tire transpiration 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 spare point for setting the fastest lap of the race.