Max Verstappen continued his dominant run of form and managed to win the Mexico City GP by a comfortable margin over Lewis Hamilton in P2. However, as per F1 analyst Peter Windsor, Hamilton did something towards the end of the race which presumably annoyed Verstappen a lot.
Starting from P3 on the grid, Verstappen managed to take the lead of the race right at the start as Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez tripped over themselves. Hamilton on the other hand also had a good start to the race, climbing up to P4 from his starting position of P6.
Superb race management from @LewisHamilton…. Aggressive when they needed to be, looked after tyres at other times.
6th to 2nd… final stint on Mediums with fastest lap at the end was very impressive!
Bet Bono was smiling more at the end… pic.twitter.com/sjYHxY8EIb
— Karun Chandhok (@karunchandhok) October 30, 2023
By lap 40 of 71, Hamilton had managed to get past Leclerc and get into P2. However, he was never a threat for Verstappen as his medium tyres kept falling off and the Dutchman kept increasing the gap between him and P2. What was a 2.6 second gap on lap 40 had turned into a 14 second plus gap by lap 71.
However, the one thing that would have left Verstappen annoyed was the fact that Lewis Hamilton somehow managed to steal the fastest lap away from the Red Bull star at the very last lap of the race. This meant that Verstappen couldn’t come away with the full 26 points from the weekend
Windsor explained in his latest race analysis video, “That must have annoyed Max a bit, because he always likes to set the fastest lap and at that moment he had the fastest lap in hand.”
Max Verstappen could have had a tougher fight from Hamilton
Peter Windsor was also amazed by the fact had Hamilton had enough tyre life left to set a fastest lap on the last lap. The 71-year-old British analyst believes that Hamilton could have pushed much harder if he knew that his tyres would last enough for him to set a fastest lap.
However, Hamilton’s P2 will be extremely important for him in his quest to second place in the driver’s championship. As of now, Hamilton trails Sergio Perez by 20 points with 3 more races to go.
DRIVER STANDINGS
The battle for P2 hots up, while Sainz overtakes Alonso for P4 #F1 #MexicoGP pic.twitter.com/e3DbNRpPy3
— Formula 1 (@F1) October 29, 2023
In the larger scheme of things, it was also important for Mercedes as a team as they are also in the fight for P2 with Ferrari for the Constructors’ Championship. Toto Wolff had already made it extremely clear how important a P2 would be for the Brackley outfit as it would be testament to the fact that if they aren’t championship material yet, things are slowly improving and moving in the right direction.
