2025 Mexican GP: Post Race Analysis

One of the most anticipated starts to a race this season and we weren't disappointed. 4 wide into turn one, cars bumping into each other, cars going off track. It was chaos! Yet everyone survived. Fantastic. The drivers and the teams certainly did their part to put on an exciting race. Formula 1's job is to give us the good coverage and correctly police the race. As usual, they failed. Plenty of amazing action was missed or left to the small split screen. Then the VSC at the end which robbed us all of a potential brilliant finish. Such a shame.

McLaren as dominant as ever with Lando Norris. Credit to him for being pretty much perfect all weekend. Huge advantage in quali, perfected the first 4 corners of the start of the race and actually made it through lap one in the lead, and then completely dominated the race without a single challenge. Can't help but find it strange how in recent races he has been good but still relatively similar in pace to his rivals, and yet a week later the car is half a second faster than everyone, including his teammate. Oscar struggles once again. Loses more points and relinquishes the championship lead. All season he was at the very least on par with Lando, and usually quicker in both quali and race pace. Suddenly he is absolutely no where. That's weird. Very weird. Especially since there have been no changes to the car.

Ferrari was competitive, relatively speaking. Charles scored another amazing podium. Unfortunately both drivers were told to LICO within a handful of laps so by lap 10 it was clear there was no hope for victory. As we all saw Charles got lucky with the VSC at the end as Max had an excellent chance to attempt the pass into T1 going into the final lap. Lewis Hamilton. Did he get screwed or not? He actually had a poor start sitting P3 behind Lando on the clean side of the track. Charles did a better job and got his car along side. A little rubbing, Charles gets a snap and has to go over the grass and comes out in front of Lewis. Given its lap 1 and everyone is scattered and going all over the place, it's pretty common and there is always some leniency and we fans want some good hard racing. As it was mentioned on the broadcast, any other team would likely call for a penalty but Ferrari wasn't going to try and penalize themselves. Leaving it as tough racing isn't a bad call. Lewis then gets in tough scrap with Max, same as we've seen before. Both pushing the other off the track. Lewis ends up out braking himself and goes off where he is supposed to use the escape road. It was absolutely impossible for him to make the turn for the escape road at those speeds and with that low of grip. But that is not what he was penalized for. He absolutely without question gained an advantage. A decent one too. At least 2 or 3 seconds. He made no attempt to slow down to nullify that advantage and thus he was rightly given a penalty. Is 10 seconds too much? Well if you're a driver and you're competitor got a 3 second advantage ahead of you, in clean air, would you be satisfied with a 5 second penalty? Probably not. Lewis probably could have had a good day, but that's racing.

Red Bull unexpectedly got another podium. Max was incredible as always, but loved the strategy call right from the beginning. Shame Max didn't get a chance to try a pass for P2, as that could be very critical in the championship. Yuki had the same strategy as Max but just didn't have the same pace, as we all can expect. P11 for him.

Haas scored a tremendous P4 with Ollie Bearman. The kid has been a Rockstar as of late and made a statement for Rookie of the Year. Had shocking pace, made great decisions, and even had some good clean racing against Max and came out ahead. What a fantastic job and kudos to the entire team. Ocon definitely overshadowed but he finished P9 and his points also help move Haas into 8th in the WCC.

Mercedes probably had faster car than they showed but were stuck in traffic all day. Kimi Antonelli was one that went off the track in turn 1 - lap 1, but he managed to find himself ahead of George and deserved to finish that way. George again the queen of complaining. Insufferable amount of bitching and whining saying he was so much faster. Eventually got his way and it made no difference. Despite the radio nonsense, George might have been right that the team should have let him go several laps earlier, but it's race. Pass him on track.

Sauber scored the final point with Bortoleto. Flew under the radar but it was a great drive by him. A bummer for Nico Hulkenberg who ran into PU issues on the formation lap and was forced to retire.

Williams had a poor showing. Sainz was for sure the better driver but his race was compromised with a 5 place grid penalty and then a rev limiter issue that gave two penalties. Strange they didn't retire the car after the second penalty since there was no hope for points. Failed to finish anyways. Albon was one of the drivers to start on Hard tires and that was a mistake. He also complained a lot and he didn't look all that fast on the soft tires.

RB maybe wasn't that quick today and perhaps got the strategy wrong too. Hadjar ran out of tires and fell out of the points. Lawson was first to retire due to damage collected on lap 1.

Aston Martin was dead slow. Stroll had a spin on lap one which we didn't get a replay of, he some how recovered nicely and was actually looking quick on his soft tires. Caught up to Alonso before he pitted, and even made a pass. Went on the mediums and dropped back down to the last of the cars ahead of the two tractors remaining. Alonso clearly had an issue, unfortunately I didn't hear what it was or the reason for his retirement.

Alpine. Well the car is pure trash so their drivers finished dead last.

Driver of the Day: Ollie Bearman. A very surprising P4, looked like a podium might have been possible. Made good passes, had great pace and didn't crack under all that pressure. Great job. Honorable mention to Lando Norris.