2 weeks Ago
If you’re not happy for Carlos Sainz, you either have no heart or work for Red Bull Racing. This was Sainz’s weekend. He was fast from Friday practice.
He dominated qualifying, setting two times good enough for pole position in Q3. Every F1 qualifying session and race LIVE in 4K on Kayo. New to Kayo? Get your first month for just $1.
Limited time offer. In the race he beat Max Verstappen in a straight fight. He had the pace to comfortably beat both teammate Charles Leclerc and also Lando Norris.
His points are now underwriting Ferrari bursting back into championship contention. It was a feel-good story for the Spaniard and a further boost to the sport, which is eyeing a down-to-the-wire finish for at least one of its championships this season. But Sainz’s triumph had to share the spotlight with the battle in the drivers championship, where Max Verstappen’s driving has again found itself under a harsh spotlight.
Coming just one week after his podium in Austin, where he benefited from Lando Norris’s penalty for overtaking off the track, in Mexico the stewards were far less forgiving of the Dutchman’s behaviour, whacking him with a race-ending penalty that guaranteed Norris would make up ground on the points table. Whether or not it’s enough to swing the drivers championship battle is unclear, but it compounded a tough weekend for Red Bull Racing in the constructors championship on a day Sergio Pérez’s confidence crisis hit new highs, dropping the team to third in the standings. CARLOS SAINZ SAVOURS POSSIBLE FERRARI SWAN SONG Carlos Sainz’s fourth win was his most emotional.
All the Spaniard’s victories have been hard fought, but it isn’t that he had to see off first Verstappen and then Leclerc and Sainz to win that made this one special It’s that this is Sainz’s last season at Ferrari, the team for which almost every driver dreams of racing. And drivers rarely have successful careers after leaving Ferrari. Sainz will take refuge at the backmarker Williams team, and while the historic British squad is on the up, it’s desperately unlikely to become a regular race winner even in the medium term.
Given how quickly the sport moves, Sainz is painfully aware that Mexico City could be not just his last victory for Ferrari but his last victory in Formula 1. “It was extremely emotional,” he said. “I did shed a tear during the Spanish anthem.
It’s one of the best moments in my career.” Sainz revealed he’d had a significant contingent of family and friends with him for the occasion, and in Spanish-speaking Mexico, it made the entire occasion more meaningful. “I knew my family was coming and my best friends, my girlfriend — a lot of people were here to support me — and I said maybe destiny has something ready for me this weekend, that my maybe last win with Ferrari can come in front of them with all the support that I had from them all this year and on a great podium, a great place like Mexico City.
“My mum had never been present on a race win with me, and the fact that she was coming here this weekend, I wanted really to win a race in front of her. “I had a very good feeling coming into the weekend and was also obviously very determined to win it. “The way the whole weekend played out, it was just perfect.
“That move — losing at the start and then having to fight back with Max just made everything a bit more tricky — probably makes it taste even better. because I had to work hard for it, and to do this weekend in front of all of them was incredible. “I’ve been driving well and I made it stick, and you cannot imagine how happy and proud I am right now.
” Sainz has found another level since the mid-season break. He was arguably the faster Ferrari drive in Austin, but here there was no doubt. Every race at which he leads Ferrari only heightens the absurdity of his plight in Formula 1.
Sainz, a multiple race winner, is one of the sport’s slickest operators but has been passed over by every frontrunning team for 2025. No driver can afford to feel entitled in Formula 1, but Sainz deserves a race-winning seat. The sport deserves to have him in a race-winning seat.
But without one, all he can do is try to soak up his final moments at the front — and perhaps power Ferrari to an unlikely constructors championship. MAX VERSTAPPEN GETS HIS COMEUPPANCE AS NORRIS LEARNS THE ROPES You got the sense this was always going to happen. Max Verstappen has been a master of driving to the limit to the regulations.
His defensive and offensive style is sometimes controversial, but rarely does he exceed what’s allowed in the rules, often to the chagrin of his bested rivals. That was the case last week in Austin, where his understanding of the driving guidelines and the precedence of making the apex first beyond all other indicators ensured he held third place ahead of the penalised Norris. This weekend, however, he overstepped the line.
His driving already in the spotlight, he was guaranteed intense scrutiny when he pushed Norris off the track in defence of third place and then ambitiously attempted to re-pass him off the track at turn 8. This week the stewards — a different set to those who ruled in the United States — came down hard on him, slapping him with a 10-second penalty for each transgression. There were clear differences between this week and last.
Unlike in Austin, Norris made sure to keep himself alongside and arguably fractionally ahead of Verstappen all the way to the apex of the corner, where he was then run out of room. Last week Verstappen beat Norris to the apex, which under the prevailing guidelines meant he claimed the corner. His driving trajectory also made it clear that he could have made the corner had Verstappen not forced him out, whereas last week he bailed early from the contest to complete his overtake off the track — not that Christian Horner saw it like that.
The Red Bull Racing principal printed off a selection of Norris telemetry data comparing his approach to turn 4 during the lap 10 incident with his fastest lap of the race, claiming it proved that the Briton was never going to make the corner fairly. He didn’t feel the same about Verstappen at turn 8, however. He confirmed, however, that he wouldn’t take that evidence to the stewards for an appeal.
Norris, having finally beaten Verstappen at his own game after several attempts this season, said he hoped it was a line in the sand that would signal a future of fairer racing between them. “It’s clear that it doesn’t matter if he wins or second, his only job is to beat me in the race, and he’ll sacrifice himself to do that, like he did today,” he said. “But I want to have good battles with him.
I want to have those tough battles, like I’ve seen him have plenty of times, but fair ones. “I think today was not fair, clean racing, and therefore, I think he got what he had coming to him. “I can’t speak for him, and maybe he’ll say something different, but I think today was a step too far from both of those, and it was clear that the stewards agreed with that.
“I don’t see it as a win or anything like this, but it’s more that I hope Max acknowledges that he took it a step too far.” But it’s also interesting to note that Norris appears to have treated the entire saga — and his past fractious battles with Verstappen — as chances to sharpen his own game, as his parry in Mexico City suggested. ‘Today I think was another level on [Austin],” he said.
“I was ahead of Max in the braking zone, past the apex. I am avoiding crashing today. This is the difference.
“I’ve always fought fairly ...
maybe sometimes I’ve lost out because I’ve been too fair and not aggressive enough, and that’s where I have to find a better balance. “Those are the things I’ve had to change since last weekend and the course of this year — that when you’re racing these top guys, you learn things and you have to understand better these balances of attacking, defending, risk management, aggression, all of those types of things.” With a new marker laid down through the penalties and with the FIA poise to tweak the rules of engagement, next time it could be Verstappen having to meet Norris’s style to beat him in a race.
FERRARI TAKES SECOND IN THE COSNTRUCTORS CHAMPIONSHIP Verstappen, however, didn’t seem exercised by his dual penalties after the race. Of more concern to him was his car’s lack of pace. Even without the penalty he wouldn’t have been fast enough to prevent Ferrari from dumping Red Bull Racing to third in the constructors championship.
The Italian team is now 25 points ahead of Red Bull Racing and 29 points behind McLaren. It’s an almost unbelievable twist. This is the team that attained new, surely unreachable heights for domination in a single season last year, winning every race but one.
It hasn’t been as low as third after the first three races of a season since the 2019 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix almost five years ago. And while Sergio Pérez’s underperformance has clearly played a central role in the team’s anaemic recent points haul, he’s not 100 per cent of the cause. The RB20 has clearly been in decline.
Max Verstappen started the year completing a nine-race win streak and claiming seven of the first 10 grands prix. He’s since gone winless for 10 straight races, dating back to June’s Spanish Grand Prix. It’s the longest drought of his title-winning era, and of his last five seasons only the 11-race winless run of 2020 surpasses it.
The Dutchman is still performing at a high level — his penalties this weekend notwithstanding — allowing him to tread water at the top of the drivers championship, but that hasn’t been enough to keep Ferrari and McLaren, both fighting with both drivers, at bay for individual race wins or even podiums, having six of the last 10 races outside the top three. “The biggest problem today — and of course what I worry about — is the race pace, which was really not good and something that we need to analyse, because even without those penalties we had no chance at all to fight up front,” Verstappen said. “This was a really bad day for us, but I also know that we can do much better than this.
” But the team is running out of time to find a solution. With only four rounds remaining and Ferrari on a run, it will take more than returning to mere equilibrium to rescue second — never mind first — in the championship. Ferrari, on the other hand, is revelling in its form, with team boss Fred Vasseur sounding optimistic for the first time in months that his team can be competitive at all races for the rest of the season.
“I think we showed good pace the last four or five events — I would say from Monza,” he told Sky Sports. “It’s true that now we’ve covered almost all the different tracks [since then], and we will be competitive in Sao Paulo, but it’s so tight that anybody can win in Sao Paulo.” The championship fight is on between McLaren and Ferrari, but the battle might have already passed Red Bull Racing by.
SERGIO PÉREZ BLAMES LIAM LAWSON FOR SHOCKER Sergio Pérez had a great home grand prix for about two minutes. His launch was superb, gaining him five places off the line to bring points into view. Then the stewards opened an investigation into him making a false start.
His offence was an unusual one — starting too far forwards in his grid spot. It’s the sort of error a driver of his experience — and a driver in desperate need of a good, clean race — shouldn’t be making. Then his race unravelled.
He became embroiled in a battle with Liam Lawson for 10th place. The Kiwi, knowing that he’s competing to take the Mexican’s seat, gave absolutely no quarter, beating him in a side-by-side duel. Pérez’s clumsy offence risked a penalty — curiously he didn’t receive one despite doing effectively the same thing to Lawson at turn 4 as Verstappen did to Norris earlier in the race — but ended up with far more costly bodywork damage.
He then ended up duelling messily with Lance Stroll, at which point the team brought him in for an early pit stop to serve his penalty, preferring to get it out of the way before a possible additional punishment came his way. His second stint was uninspiring, an eventually he was forced into a race-killing second pit stop. With nothing to gain and nothing to lose, he was brought in ahead of the penultimate lap for a fresh set of softs to take a point for fastest lap, at that stage held by Norris.
Ferrari had was already doing likewise with Charles Leclerc, who smashed Pérez’s best effort by 0.873 seconds. It was a sad full stop on Pérez’s most miserable weekend of the year.
Bizarrely he blamed Lawson for his wasted day, lashing out at the Kiwi Lawson by claiming he’s not up to being in Formula 1. “I don’t think he has the right attitude for it,” he said, per Racer . “He needs to be a bit more humble.
“When a two-time world champion [Fernando Alonso] was saying things last weekend, he completely ignored him. “When you come to Formula 1, you’re obviously very hungry and so on, but you have to be respectful off-track and on-track. “I don’t think he’s showing the right attitude to show a good pace for himself, because I think he’s a great driver and I hope for him that he can step back and learn from it.
“He’s not getting any penalties as well. He did the same with Fernando [in the Austin sprint], with Franco [Colapinto] in the end. There are no penalties or none of his fault as well.
“I think he’s just racing everyone out of control at the moment.” Remarkably he said Red Bull Racing should speak to Lawson about costing the senior team points in the championship. “I think in his two first grands prix he has had too many incidents, and I think there will be a point where it can cost him too much, like he did this weekend.
“He has to have the right attitude to say, ‘Look, I’m overdoing it a little bit; I will step back and start again’. “Today it cost Red Bull Racing a lot of points, so I think they should speak to him.” While Pérez was understandably fired up about his insipid home-race performance, his lashing out against his likely replacement reeked of desperation, particularly in blaming the Kiwi for costing his team championship points.
Further, the stewards didn’t penalised Lawson for either the Alonso incident last week or his battle with Pérez. Colapinto was penalised for hitting Lawson in their late-race run-in. It’s hard to avoid the feeling that we’re witnessing Pérez final Red Bull Racing chapter.
Unfortunately he’s making it uncomfortable viewing..
