Dre’s Race Review: F1’s 2024 Mexican Grand Prix

Carlos Sainz dominates a weekend where driving standards ruled the airwaves and Max Verstappen stepped over the line again. Dre reviews the Mexican GP.

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Read time: 10 mins

“Desperate Measures.”

Welcome to Part 2 of the weekly DRR double-header, and it’s time for F1 to take centre stage with Round 20 and the Mexican Grand Prix. And with it, another Ferrari victory as they make a late Championship push, Lando Norris keeping his increasingly thin title hopes alive, and Max Verstappen taking lead headlines after another racecraft flashpoint with his main rival. Let’s get into it.

Do you know what was the most frustrating thing about this weekend? The Austin hangover was insane. The Right to Review system was never really at the forefront of most people’s minds after last week’s US Grand Prix. McLaren team principal Andrea Stella himself even admitted that it was unlikely the penalty was going to be overturned. And yet on Thursday night, just as the media centre was packing up to head back to their hotels and Air BnB, McLaren activated a Right to Review on Norris’ penalty. Collective groans could be heard from Mexico City, and I live in West London. 

In a four-day Motorsport weekend, half of it had *that* become the main story. On Thursday, it was the announcement. On Friday, it was the hearing. Between that and the subsequent Drivers Meeting’, it was six hours before it was publicly announced at 3am UK time on Saturday morning that McLaren’s appeal had been rejected. For those who don’t know, you need a LOT of evidence for a Right to Review to stick. The new evidence has to be “significant” and “relevant” to even get a hearing, and even if you do, there’s no guarantee a result will be overturned. 

The new evidence that McLaren submitted? The verdict itself! McLaren claimed that because Norris was so far ahead entering Turn 12 at COTA, Max had become the attacker and not the defender by the time they got to the corner. It wasn’t an illogical line of thinking, Lando did have nearly a full car length by the braking zone…

…but it was never going to hold up. The stewards already knew that when they considered their original verdict. They have cameras, onboards, telemetry, CCTV, etc. Even if you disagree with their decision-making process, chances are if it’s a racecraft decision, it’s evidence they’ve already seen. That’s why everyone who knows how this sport operates knew an overturned result was unlikely. Because like Sunshine Anderson, they’ve heard it all before.

By Day 3, we got one more additional layer to the story, as the FIA announced that they’ll be revising the guidelines on overtaking within the month. The impression I got was that the governing body was quick to point out that those guidelines were a collaborative effort between the governing body and the drivers. It tracks because the reaction to Austin by the drivers on media day couldn’t have been clearer – In being unsure what any of them wanted. From comparisons to AI from Yuki Tsunoda to Valtteri Bottas saying the regs are fine, drivers are just taking the piss, to Max Verstappen of all people calling them “overregulated”. All I got from it was that the drivers weren’t on the same page. So is it hardly a shock that the rulebook turned out janky too? It seems post-Mexico, there’s a more unified front to change the rules immediately, but it took the next section to play out for the drivers to almost universally be on the same page.

I agree, I think the book needs revising. If you didn’t read my Austin review, here’s the short version – Max Verstappen is gaming the rules because he’s using offence, to play defence. He knows that if he wins the race to the apex, he has the right of way, even if he leaves the track when defending his position. There’s nothing in the rules at the moment, to stop Verstappen from doing that. I don’t like it, I think it’s nasty racing, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of viewers and it urgently needs to be ironed out of the book because I don’t think it makes for a satisfying product to consume.

By Saturday Night, Qualifying felt like a sideshow. Carlos Sainz took a stunning pole position, where he was so fast his two best laps were good enough to top the timing tower. Max Verstappen pulled out another front-row start in second, with Norris and Charles Leclerc taking up Row 2. It’s funny. With 767 metres to Turn 1, it’s the longest start of the year and one of the few tracks it’s generally better to start on the second row because of the slipstream to the first corner. But it’d be pretty wild if, after all this drama about the passing guidelines, it came up again immediately, right? 

Of course, Verstappen nailed his start and led at Lap 1 again, he is so good off the line. He passed Sainz long before he even got to Turn 1 but had his start neutralised after a nasty Turn 1 crash after Pierre Gasly squeezed Alex Albon on entry, with the latter crashing into Yuki Tsunoda. Not long after the restart, Sainz comes through with a late but firm pass into Turn 1. He’s slow over the Turn 2 apex but he gets it done. Norris is next line and he’s going for it a couple of laps later. It’s the run down to Turn 4 and Norris tries to go the long way around. Verstappen runs Norris off the road again, with the McLaren skipping across the grass to rejoin. Then Verstappen tries it again at Turn 8, lunging down the inside and leaving the track again to get back in front.

This set of stewards wasn’t so kind compared to Austin. Both incidents were deemed to be Verstappen leaving the track and gaining an advantage. Both were hit with 10-second penalties. The first one at Turn 4, also gave out two penalty points.

My opinion? Yeah, these were pretty much slam dunks. Verstappen runs Norris off the road and this time, Norris has enough of a car on the outside to warrant racing room. You could maybe just about argue the mitigation of Verstappen keeping two wheels on the track at Turn 4. Turn 8 is egregious. He didn’t even try to make the corner, it was a “yield or crash” move, cutting the corner like a 10-year-old on Forza Horizon to guarantee his car was in front again. It’s shameless racing and I find it baffling that the stewards thought that his Turn 4 move warranted penalty points, and Turn 8 didn’t. 

Again, I don’t like the way he’s doing, but I get why he does. Verstappen walked into this race with a 57-point Championship lead. He can afford to lose 11 points a weekend from race start until the end of the year and he’d win it all. But he also knows his car has been struggling for over half the season. Red Bull has been arguably the fourth-best car since mid-summer. They’ve gone 10 races since their last win, their longest dry spell since 2020. Max is driving at an otherworldly level given the circumstances just to keep himself in play. He’s more or less admitted his only goal is trying to beat Norris, and he will use his car as a defensive weapon and roll that dice if necessary.

It’s not the first time he’s done it. 2021 played out the same way. He was prepared to be bullish when Lewis Hamilton was the threat and largely, it paid off. It took Hamilton a while to understand it (He was run off at Imola and Catalunya, and yes, Silverstone was on him), but the flashpoints at the end of the season was a Hamilton who was prepared for what Max would try. From the pinching at Monza’s chicane to the nastiness of Saudi Arabia and the “brake test”. Remember, this is the same Verstappen who sent it on Hamilton on the first lap of the decider that year in Abu Dhabi, knowing he was losing a tiebreaker, with a World Championship on the line, and he ran LH four wheels off. 

It’s a part of why Verstappen is at least respected as a driver. I’m 32. I grew up a huge Schumacher fan. I’ve said before that Schumi was a driver who rewrote the rulebook on how to be a GP driver. From the insane fitness regime to the utter ruthlessness on track. He didn’t back down to Ayrton Senna, the undisputed king of the “Yield or Crash” mentality. Be became the centrepiece of F1 for his speed, talent, and his willingness to be an utter bastard to try and win, at any cost. You know Adelaide 94’ and Jerez 97’, we all saw the lengths he was prepared to go to to try and win. 

Verstappen today, and how he’s been promoted since he debuted fully in 2015, was a return to the old-school mentality of being a bastard on track. For those expecting him to change, you’re probably going to be disappointed. This is how he’s always been. It’s part of the reason he has the Championships he has. He’s been the only top-tier driver in recent memory whose attitude has actively been “I’ll leave it to the judges”. He’s like an MMA fighter but in reverse. 

I think toning it down wouldn’t hurt. He now has 6 penalty points for the year, he’s not a million miles away from a race ban. He doesn’t have to take the amount of risk he’s taking, especially with Ferrari playing a new role in this title fight which I’ll talk about later. And the more he’s banging on the door, the more likely the stewards will think with unconscious bias and hit him with penalties because it’s abundantly clear we all know what he’s doing. But Max’s response when asked if he’d done anything differently? “Maybe get a drink in the pitstop, I mean the engine was off for 20s, so I had enough time.”

Say what you will about 2024. It isn’t ending boring. 

And once again, Ferrari’s victories are so straightforward, that it feels like I’m doing them a disservice by relegating them here. Carlos Sainz for me is the definition of a Goldilocks driver. Someone with purple patches. He’ll have his off days, but when dialled in, 1 in 6 times, he’ll go off. This was one of those weekends. After he took the lead, he took as much as an eight-second lead, and never really looked back. Charles Leclerc couldn’t hang with him. 

The Monagasque driver succumbed to pressure from Norris and coughed up second place late on after nearly losing it on the final corner. A poor mistake, and another one for the narrative drum of high-profile Leclerc errors, but it was a save that Marc Marquez would have been proud of. With a 1-3 and Fastest Lap combo, and Oscar Piastri only managing eighth after a shock Q1 elimination, Ferrari’s dropped the Constructor’s Championship gap down to 29 points with four to play. They’re in the race, and McLaren has to look over their shoulder. If Ferrari can keep this up, there’s a chance team Papaya heads back to Woking with nothing at all, let alone the double. Who’d have guessed that when Sainz claimed they’d lost two months of the season when they were nowhere at Silverstone? 

I’ll say this much in Verstappen’s flimsy defence – This wasn’t more than 10 seconds per incident. The most high-profile collision penalty of the modern age, Hamilton at Silverstone 2021, was also 10 seconds. And that was putting Verstappen in the wall at 51G’s at 170mph. I don’t think we need to drink Zak Brown’s Kool-Aid when it comes to Drive-Through Penalties and worse.  

Also, Christian Horner out here breaking out the telemetry in the post-race presser to defend his man, was absolute cinema wasn’t it? We already know from his tenure as team boss the man embraces being the wrestling “heel” figure and being the Kardashian figure of the F1 paddock, but this was Valentino Rossi in 2015 when he was paranoid about Marc Marquez’s racing. And we all know how that story ended. Someone should write a book about that.

The funniest part? Horner admitted that his own driver’s logic – Rushing the apex to claim the corner was flawed and that more people will pick that up in their racecraft if the FIA allows it. FUNNY THAT.

As for Sergio Perez… it’s over. I’m not even going to call him cheeks on this one, it’s just sad at this point. Eliminated in Q1 in qualifying at his home race, got a time penalty for missing his box on the grid, then damaged his car being over-aggressive on Liam Lawson and sunk back to the bottom again. Now to be honest, I’m glad that the stewards let it go, both men went over the limit and knew what they were doing. My gut tells me both men were trying to make a point about their respective futures and neither came out partially smelling of roses. And as much as it’s easy to mock Perez after his poor performance and talk about Lawson’s poor attitude, he was told to fuck off while being overtaken – I wouldn’t exactly be charitable either to be fair.

But in any case, this is surely the beginning of the end of Checo’s time with Red Bull. This is untenably bad. He was given extra time till the end of the season after the reveal that the team ignored his advice, but he’s failed to capitalise on it on a season where the team are almost certain to finish third in the Constructors now. Liam Lawson can handle Red Bull’s business from 2025, or if he impresses at the end-of-season test he’s now confirmed for, I’d be fine with Yuki Tsunoda getting the call-up. But time is up for Checo, that’s abundantly clear from what we’ve seen since the break. 

Round of applause for the photographer who captured the shot of Tsunoda hitting the outside wall on the opening lap. We don’t give the Photographers of this sport enough credit for their brilliant work in capturing the essence of this sport, and this doesn’t get much better than that. 

Double points for Haas again, with Kevin Magnussen having his best F1 weekend in a good couple of years. A shame he’s left it so late to show his best but that’s the embodiment of K-Mag being such a “peaky” driver. The upsides are great, but he’s just not shown it enough to justify his employment. Aston Martin being 40 points in front in 5th in the Constructors is probably one ask too many, but it’s fun to think about…

And finally… you don’t get any bonus Internet brownie points for being what you think is the arbiter of good F1 opinions on social media. There are far more serious things in life than whether you think Charles Leclerc is worthy of a top seat or how hard Max races people. Pick your battles and fight less.

About the Author:

Dre Harrison

Somehow can now call himself a Production Coordinator at the Motorsport Network, coming off the back of being part of the awkward Johto Era at WTF1. All off a University Project that went massively out of hand. Weird huh?

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