Best driver: Verstappen

Worst driver: Mazepin

Best team: Red Bull

Worst team: Haas

Best overtake: Verstappen's double move on the Mercs at Turn 1

Worst overtake: Sainz passing Leclerc under team orders (I get it, it's just boring)

Best moment: Perez making the post race events an actual celebration for once.

Worst moment: Alfa Romeo screwing up Giovinazzi's good start with yet another awful strategy call

 

And the race in a sentence: High altitude leaves Mercedes gasping for air whilst Red Bull bring a wave of joy in Mexico

Oh yeah what happened with Gio? There was no mention of it during the race. I guess Alfa don't care cos he's leaving next season.

Best driver: Verstappen

Worst driver: Botas

Best team: Red Bull

Worst team: McLaren (what happened to them, out of the blue they re not the #3 best car anymore)

Best overtake: Verstappen on Turn 1

Worst overtake: the Bottas/Ricciardo incident

Best moment: The start with Verstappen

Worst moment: the Ferrari orders

 

And the race in a sentence:

Bottas' race summarises his life history in Mercedes: stratospheric pole, awful start being incapable of blocking max as he should have, then his usual bad luck accident with ricciardo, then unable to overtake Ricciardo during a million laps.

 

Oh yeah what happened with Gio? There was no mention of it during the race. I guess Alfa don't care cos he's leaving next season.

He was 6th at the end of lap 1 but repassed by Sainz on the restart, the ran in 7th for some time. They pitted him early to avoid an undercut buy Vettel among others but it dumped him in to traffic on a circuit were overtaking is very hard.

Worst team: McLaren (what happened to them, out of the blue they re not the #3 best car anymore)

They have a Mercedes engine. All the teams running one suffered in the high altitude of Mexico City. Still 3rd or 4th best car but the Ferrari has improved a lot recently.

 

Also the Bottas/Ricciardo incident wasn't an attempted overtake, so much as a minor error by both of them with, in my opinion, Daniel marginally most at fault. Racing incident all the way

I must admit I'm surprised Ricciardo didn't get a penalty. It was no different to Gasly/Alonso at Turkey imo (if anything Danny's one was a bigger error).

 

I expect Ferrari will be better than McLaren at Brazil & Qatar then McLaren at the last 2 races so still some distance in this fight for third.

Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto believes their Alfa Romeo-based driver Antonio Giovinazzi deserves to stay in the series.

 

Currently in his third campaign with Alfa Romeo, Giovinazzi is fighting to extend his career into a new season – although his chances look to have diminished further after Mexico.

 

The tension was already there when Giovinazzi ignored team orders at the Turkish Grand Prix, refusing to let his team-mate Kimi Raikkonen through, before then at the Mexican GP sarcastically criticising his race strategy.

 

:unsure:

It's a tricky one with Giovinazzi. he's repeatedly outperformed Raikkonen on Saturdays but until a few races recently he's failed to make much headway at the start and ended up staring at the back of the Finn's rear wing for long periods. On those occasions when he has managed a decent start he's often been compromised by poor luck or bad strategy calls. It's also difficult to judge with a car that has had zero development all season.

 

He would make a decent pairing with Bottas next year and could learn much from the soon to be ex-Mercedes driver. it would also be much easier to make a reasoned call on his abilities when teamed with Bottas. In the partnership with Kimi it's tough to judge the Italian's ability because we can't easily tell how much of Raikkonen's performance is down to fading reflexes or lack of motivation, even if there's no doubt he still has huge experience.

 

I personally think Giovinazzi is better than he looks based on results but I'm not convinced it's quite good enough for F1. One more season would make that much clearer but I'm not sure Alfa Romeo are prepared to wait that long.

 

 

 

Alfa's decision is due to be announced on Tuesday

Edited November 11, 20213 yr by Severin

He's already had 3 seasons and I can't think of a single wow moment in his entire F1 career. Plenty of young drivers who would do a better job in that seat imo.

He's already had 3 seasons and I can't think of a single wow moment in his entire F1 career. Plenty of young drivers who would do a better job in that seat imo.

 

 

True but he's not alone there. Plenty of very average drivers have made long careers for themselves.

Hamilton's gonna take another grid penalty this weekend so that's the win wrapped up for Max unless Ocon takes him out again.

As expected. Clearly the best circuit to take that penalty

It's a bit strange that Hamilton's taken 2 penalties now where as Max has only taken 1 despite the crashes at Silverstone & Hungary.

The Mercedes engine loses much more power per mileage than any of the others,

 

It's an issue with the design

Ahh interesting, didn't know that. Agreed this is the best track to take the pen then.

So Mercedes who protested Red Bulls wings are under investigation for their own wings and now Max is being investigated for touching Mercedes' wing in Parc Ferme

the drama!

 

It's an... ahem... open and shut case.

 

Should be DSQ from Qualifying according to the rules.

 

 

 

It looked like it was already spotted by others. How else would Max have known to look there? Whilst Max clearly touches the car it's seems unlikely that made any difference to its legality.

 

That said it's an infringement of the rules and he may well get penalised but I've no idea on any precedent for this

Edited November 13, 20213 yr by Severin

My Saturday has finally relented (only including Williams appearances, as he would not have been close to as familiar with the Merc last year as Bottas was - and even then, he was very close to pole...)

 

Latifi becomes the first Williams driver to trump Russell in qualifying! Well... Sort of... (also almost said Latifi outqualifies teammate for the first time, but forgot about Aitken [though, that's arguably a less favourable position than Russell was in the Merc!])

Lewis demoted to last on grid for sprint.

Whatever gains he makes in the sprint, he will still incur a 5 place penalty for the race

 

Max fined 50,000 Euros. Stewards rule he did no harm to Lewis' car

 

 

 

All seems fairly reasonable

Edited November 13, 20213 yr by Severin