He had announced that he would leave Mexico on Sunday, November 7, with more points ahead than when he arrived there. Used to these brave formulas, Max Verstappen was not lying, even if the qualifying session did not argue in favor of Batavian prophecy.
But the Red Bull driver perhaps knew he would achieve the perfect start, the one every driver dreams of, the one that would allow him, at the end of the first corner, to erase the two Mercedes in front of him on the grid. From then on, on a single-seater galvanized by the Mexican altitude, he had only to embark on a solo rider.
Verstappen, in his breakaway, however received a boost from a hero as unexpected as he was unhappy: Valtteri Bottas, the poleman, soaped at the start then clung with Daniel Ricciardo, leaving Lewis Hamilton between the two jaws of the Reds Bull.
Within seconds, the premieres of a finally monotonous Grand Prix thereafter, the balance of power had completely changed. In the ideal position when the lights went out, Mercedes had just lost big, very big, and Toto Wolff’s charcoal gaze, in the firm’s stand with the star, promised his Finnish driver compliments …
The intervention of the safety car, a few moments later after a collision between Mick Schumacher and Yuki Tsunoda, no more than overtaking the latecomers or passing through the pits changed an immutable situation: the Verstappen car was simply above the rest.
The hot Mexican public, he still found material to ignite with the 3rd place of the national idol, Sergio Perez, who came to tickle Hamilton in the last laps. But, solid, the seven-time world champion managed to preserve this second place which allows him to save the furniture. It will nevertheless be necessary to do more, in a week in Brazil, to hope to seek an eighth world crown.
Far behind this trio, Pierre Gasly signed a beautiful and solitary 4th place, after having spent almost the entire race without anyone in front or in the mirrors. Far ahead of the French, Max Verstappen signed his third victory in Mexico, the 19th of his career, and which brings him very seriously closer to a first world champion title.