Oracle Red Bull Racing‘s Max Verstappen claimed yet another win in 2022, at the FIA Formula 1 World Championships Mexico City Grand Prix.
Verstappen has already secured his second World Championship earlier this season in Japan, but the Dutchman is keen to keep winning and end a special season for Red Bull on a high. Despite an early challenge from Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton, it was a comfortable race for the Red Bull driver, who easily outpaced Hamilton on the Medium tyre.
Verstappen started on pole position after an impressive lap in qualifying and managed to get away the quickest and take advantage of the fight between both Mercedes’ cars behind him into Turn One. Hamilton managed to keep pace with the Dutchman but heavily lost out on the first and only round of pit-stops, which saw Verstappen put on faster tyres.
“The first stint of the race was critical today and we managed to stay in the lead after turn one,” Verstappen explained after the race.
“We were obviously on a different strategy to the cars around us and we had to look after our tyres a lot. We had quite good pace on the soft tyre even though it wears a bit more, we then drove the medium to the end.“
Verstappen broke yet another Formula 1 record and became the first driver to win fourteen races in a single season, breaking Sebastian Vettel‘s and Michael Schumacher‘s joint record of thirteen.
“Winning 14 races in a season is incredible, we’re having an amazing year as a Team and that’s the most important thing. We keep on pushing and we want to win as many races as possible, it’s really special what we are all achieving together this year.“
Sergio Pérez “wanted more” Than a Podium
All the attention was surrounding Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez throughout the weekend, as he was racing in front of his home crowd for the first time this season. The fan favourite secured only fourth on the grid in Saturday’s qualifying session after he struggled to hook up the car throughout the weekend, but an improved performance in the race saw him finish on the podium ahead of George Russell.
Despite managing to get on the podium, Pérez will be disappointed that he wasn’t able to bring the battle to Hamilton in second, who was visibly struggling on the Hard compound tyres. Pérez’s tyres fell off towards the end of the race, meaning he couldn’t mount a challenge late on and came under some light pressure from Russell, but he was able to maintain a healthy gap before the latter pitted for a fastest lap attempt.
“It feels good to be on the podium, but I wanted more today, I am a little bit disappointed,” Pérez admitted.
“We could have finished second definitely, but we had a poor pitstop, which really prevented us doing the undercut and being closer to Lewis.
“The hard tyre didn’t work for him initially but once he got them going it just didn’t work for me, then I was looking after my tyres and there was no more in them. We were planning to do a two-stop race but degradation was better than expected.
“This place in unbelievable, it is an amazing crowd here and I will never forget these moments because of the people. It is certainly, if not the best, one of the best crowds in Formula One – I am very privileged to have this support.
“I just want to go and win the next two races now, we have had the pace in the last few races, so now I just want to put it all together, cut out the small problems and then I believe we can do that.“
Credit: Chris Graythen/Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool