Time flies when you're having fun. And it feels like the 2022 F1 season has gone by in a blink of an eye. We are just two races away from the off-season and two months away from 2023. Between Abu Dhabi in November and Bahrain in March of next year, we'll have to wait 104 days before another race for the championship begins. And all signs are pointing toward a Verstappen-dominated era.
Max Verstappen set the fastest lap time in qualifying on Saturday, but both Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were right behind him. With Sergio Perez in P4 and Carlos Sainz in P5, everyone was keen to see how things would go down at the start of the 2022 Mexico City Grand Prix.
We witnessed a relatively uneventful battle upfront, as Verstappen kept his cool and ignored the pressure being applied by Lewis Hamilton. The Dutchman had opted to start the race on Soft tires, just like Leclerc and Sainz. But both Mercedes drivers were running on Medium tires, which goes to show the diversity of strategies being applied by teams during an F1 weekend.
Verstappen had to stop for a tire change less than halfway through the race, so Hamilton managed to move up into the lead for a short while. Several interesting battles were going on at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez yesterday, including the one between Esteban Ocon and Valtteri Bottas.
The Finn was looking strong all weekend long, but he would ultimately fail to fight back against the younger Frenchman. By lap 42, Verstappen was already back in P1, with Hamilton about 10 seconds behind. Sergio Perez was down in third, with George Russell at a relatively safe distance away.
Photo: Daimler AG
Both Ferrari drivers seemed to be in a zone of their own, caught somewhere between the battles in the front and the rear. Ricciardo was a bit too ambitious during lap 51, as he went up against Yuki Tsunoda for P11.
They made contact, and the Alpha Tauri driver was forced to retire from the race, while the Australian received a 10-second penalty for causing the collision. It has been quite some time since we've seen him that determined, and he gave fans another exciting moment as he came past Bottas during lap 58.
His F1 future is uncertain at this point, so it's no wonder that he went all out during the Mexico City Grand Prix. After defeating Bottas, he took on both Alpine drivers on his way to P7. And that would allow him to go back home with his third-best result all year.
Fernando Alonso would ultimately have to retire due to an engine failure, and he wasn't happy about it at all. At the end of the day, it came as no surprise that Max Verstappen was the first driver to cross the finish line after 71 laps.
Photo: Ferrari
This means that he has now won 14 races in 2022, a new F1 record. Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel had previously topped the charts with 13 victories in a single year, while Lewis Hamilton was next in line with 11 wins. With two more rounds to go, Verstappen will be looking to make that record even harder to beat.
The former World Champion finished the race in P2, some 15 seconds behind his Red Bull Racing opponent. Sergio Perez would have loved to win in Mexico in front of his home crowd, but getting P3 isn't all that bad after all.
Checo is now five points ahead of Charles Leclerc in the standings, as Ferrari's main driver finished the race in sixth. Things aren't that great for Carlos Sainz though, as he is now four points behind Hamilton and 19 points behind George Russell.
The things Dragos enjoys the most in life are, in no particular order: cars, motorcycles, diecast cars, and drifting. He's seen (and driven) many vehicles since he started his writing career back in 2009, but his garage currently houses a 1991 Mazda RX-7 FC3S Turbo II and a 1999 Suzuki SV650-S. Full profile
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