Martin Brundle on Mexico City GP: Sergio Perez’s costly mistake, confusing qualifying and queuing F1 cars

Sky Sports F1’s Martin Brundle delivers his expert verdict on a Mexico City GP that saw plenty of drama and incidents behind Max Verstappen’s latest dominant victory.

The Mexico City Grand Prix was yet another crushing and record-breaking victory for Max Verstappen and Red Bull. He survived two starts with the 800+ metre drag race to the first corner and had an answer for any action that played out behind him. It was his 16th victory of the season.

Purely in terms of the spectacle, the first corner couldn’t have been much worse. Verstappen managed to navigate his way past both Ferraris ahead of him on the front row, and his team-mate Sergio Perez, in front of his hugely patriotic and expectant home crowd, managed to trip over one of them having had an even better start.

Thankfully Lando Norris’ determined racecraft and adventures would to a large extent save the day.

Perez turned in too hard and too early at Turn One

On Sky Sports F1, we debated whether the hugely vocal and animated support for Sergio was an added pressure to the relatively poor form he’s found himself in since the Monaco GP, or if it was just the motivation he needed while surfing the adoration.

Perez did everything right until the turning into Turn One. From fifth on the grid he made a great start, picked up the slipstream of the three now ahead of him, spotted the gap perfectly on the left-hand side which was also the cleaner, wider racing line into the first corner.

He was in a way a victim of his own great start and good decisions because he was now level with Leclerc and Verstappen for the lead. He explained afterwards that having been on the podium here twice he wanted to lead the race and take a glorious victory, which is where it sadly went wrong.

In the split second at 200mph he made two errors. He assumed the squeezed Ferrari of Leclerc in the middle would brake earlier, and presumably the same for Verstappen on the dusty inside line which would make the corner much tighter for him. Neither rival braked early and they remained fully in control of their cars.

Sergio’s biggest mistake was that he turned into the corner too hard and too early, he needed to run a wider line around the outside and seize the high ground into the second part of the chicane. Leclerc had little room to manoeuvre with Verstappen on his inside, but Perez’s overlap was quite significant and the contact between wide and sticky F1 tyres sent him skywards and soon into retirement. It was the last thing he, his team, or the fans and race promoter needed.

One of the most unpredictable qualifying days

Qualifying the day before to set that race grid had been one of the most unpredictable and confusing that I can remember. A combination of slippery circuit, low downforce due to the thin air at 2240m above sea level, a slowly reducing but still very high track temperature, the wind strength and direction moving around a little, ability to prepare the tyres perfectly on the out lap, and perhaps small variability between individual sets of new soft compound Pirellis, are the likely causes.

We had drivers like Alex Albon who’d been flying all through free practice who couldn’t get anywhere near those lap times and was convinced his car was damaged. Then we heard the Ferrari pair, who locked out the front row, to all intents and proposes saying to each other afterwards “where the hell did that lap time come from?”.

Carlos Sainz summed it up when he said “I’ve only managed to hook one lap up so far this weekend and that was it”.

Daniel Ricciardo was having, and continued to have, a very solid weekend in the Alpha Tauri, who have a good car but so far this season hadn’t really managed to get it dialled in. He would qualify fourth, ahead of Perez in the Red Bull seat he once again covets, and also ahead of both Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell.

Also impressively in the top 10 were both Alfa Romeos of Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu, but they would go on to finish last and last but one which rather sums up the bizarre qualifying session.

Oscar Piastri started seventh for McLaren but Lando Norris had a nightmare Q1 and didn’t make the cut. He had a fueling issue on his first run so had to pit, made an error on his second run, and encountered yellow flags for Fernando Alonso’s curious spin on his final run. He was out and would have started last but for penalties for Logan Sargeant in his Williams and Yuki Tsunoda in his Alpha Tauri, and Lance Stroll starting from the pit lane again in his Aston Martin.

Norris’ most impressive drive yet?

So 17th it was for Norris, but he translated that into perhaps his most impressive drive yet in F1 by coming home fifth after some stellar and daring overtakes, despite fluffing the second start after the red flag caused by heavy impact into the barriers by Kevin Magnussen when the rear suspension broke on his Haas. Thankfully he was only shaken and not injured.

McLaren had started Norris on soft tyres which didn’t actually get him that far up the pack and so pitted on lap 11 for fresh hard compound tyres. Then on lap 33 they fitted medium tyres just before the red flag on lap 35. After that, along with getting out of synch with the pack after a lot of wheelspin on the second start and falling back, he drove like a man possessed to grab that fifth place and a worthy ‘driver of the day’ from the fans, for the fourth consecutive race.

Another contender for that would have been Lewis Hamilton who grabbed second place. It’s a measure of how dominant the Verstappen/Red Bull combo is that Lewis was thoroughly pleased with that. There’s been times when he would have been crestfallen with second place, but particularly his overtake on Leclerc was brave and brilliant in equal measures.

Lewis also scored a point for fastest lap on the last tour and so is now only 20 points behind Perez for second in the drivers’ standings.

Ricciardo would finish a satisfied seventh and some desperately needed points for AlphaTauri, and his team-mate Yuki Tsunoda was flying along too until he challenged Oscar Piastri for the same piece of tarmac and lost out, the Stewards deeming it a racing incident.

Alex Albon salvaged a couple of points for Williams with another fine drive to ninth, and Esteban Ocon’s Alpine took the final point.

The Aston Martins of Alonso and Stroll looked a handful from the start, and sadly neither of them would see the chequered flag for different reasons. A few months ago Alonso looked the only driver who could keep Verstappen in sight, now he’s down to fifth in the championship with pressure behind from Norris, Leclerc and Russell.

Solution needs to be found for qualifying queues

In qualifying we witnessed the unseemly sight of drivers parked at the end of the pitlane holding up all those behind whilst they made a suitable gap for their qualifying laps. Furthermore, other drivers were holding up rivals beyond the pitlane but before the critical white painted safety car line.

To avoid the scary closing speeds when drivers are cruising pre and post their qualifying laps whilst others are flat out, it was decided to create a maximum time allowed between this line and the other safety car line just prior to pit entry. This has largely worked well in avoiding high-risk incidents on fast straights which could injure drivers, marshals and even fans.

This means the drivers manage the situation before that rule kicks in at the first line, and many penalties were expected for what appeared to be very unsporting behaviour, but the FIA decided that in fact the drivers did a good job of spreading themselves out around the track and it’s better to be very slow in the pits than on the track.

In the pit lane, in theory, you can pass another stationary car, but perhaps they should be obliged to stop in the middle lane rather than the fast lane. However, there are two issues there, the cars wouldn’t then be spaced out particularly well on track, and some circuits like Monaco don’t have the space for a spare middle pit lane like that.

It does seem unfair for teams positioned at the far end of the pitlane, and those drivers who need to get out and get on with regard to their qualifying lap preparation. For now, I guess we have to explain that it’s an acceptable practice by precedent, let the drivers and teams sort it out among themselves, and look for a better solution.

Talk to you from Brazil at the weekend.

MB

F1 heads straight to Brazil for the final leg of the Americas triple header and the last Sprint weekend of the 2023 season. Watch every session from the Sao Paulo Grand Prix live on Sky Sports F1 from Friday, with Sunday’s race at 5pm. Stream F1 on Sky Sports with NOW