Even though the Mexican track has been a bit of Mercedes’ weakness, it might come out stronger this weekend at the Mexican GP.
The Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez has worked in the favour of Mercedes’ rivals in the past years. In 2017 and 2018, Max Verstappen took victories at the race track with engines powered by Renault.
In 2019, Verstappen qualified in pole position with a Honda-powered engine. However, he suffered a grid penalty and a clash with Bottas put him out of contention for victory.
Valtteri Bottas recognises the Mexican GP as Mercedes’ weakness but he believes that some progress has been made. Despite the reliability issues that have given him three engine penalties in the past four races.
If you could pick one podium to be on…
🤩#MexicoGP 🇲🇽 #F1 pic.twitter.com/EDRsVC7pOS
— Formula 1 (@F1) November 2, 2021
The Finn however still believes that Red Bull-Honda will be hard to beat. “For Mexico, we know it’s usually been a bit of a weakness for us and it feels like quite a big chunk has been in the recent years from the power unit, with the high altitude,” said Bottas.
“But I think we’ve been able to optimise a lot since, so I would expect us to be in a better place than in recent years.
“Still, on paper, we think they’re really strong places for Red Bull and we’ve just really tried to do all the learnings we can from previous years and prepare the best that way. They’re not going to be easy weekends, but it’s never easy in this sport.”
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Both Mercedes and Red Bull are teams to beat
Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff believes that Red Bull’s victory in the past at the Mexican GP does not guarantee its win in this season. He believes that even how the 2021 season has been so far, everything can change.
“Mexico was traditionally a track that was difficult for us but this season everything can change because we’ve seen that where traditionally our strong ones and they haven’t, and vice versa so I think it’s really race by race,” said Wolff.
Both the teams – Mercedes and Red Bull – have come out as the teams to beat on tracks in this season. However, Lewis Hamilton still stands 12 points behind Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship. Meanwhile, Mercedes is leading the constructors’ championship by 23 points from Red bull.
Also read: Mercedes boss wants Lewis Hamilton to lose championship fight against Red Bull ace
