Scuderia Ferrari finished third and fourth in the Mexico City Grand Prix at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. Charles Leclerc secured the 28th podium finish of his career, with Carlos Sainz finishing behind him, the Spaniard thus moving up to fourth place in the Drivers’ classification, equal on points with Fernando Alonso, but ahead of his fellow countryman by virtue of his Singapore win. The gap to Mercedes remains the same in the Constructors’ standings at 22 points, while Charles’ podium was the 805th for the Maranello marque, coming in a race that could have ended badly for the Monegasque, as he was involved in a collision with Sergio Perez shortly after the start.
The race. The start was chaotic and on the long run down to the first corner, the slipstream effect worked against the Ferrari duo who towed the two Red Bulls along with them. The four cars arrived at the first corner together, Carlos slowed to avoid a collision, while Charles was sandwiched by the two rival cars and he and Perez made contact, with the Mexican flying off the track before retiring in the pits. Charles’ SF-23 sustained damage to the left front wing end plate, which fell off after a short while. Although this lost him a bit of downforce, he was still able to run second ahead of Carlos. The Spaniard was undercut by Hamilton, dropping to fourth after pitting for Hard tyres. Charles kept station until his own pit stop. Not long after, the race was red flagged following a crash for Kevin Magnussen and, at the restart, Leclerc had to give best to Hamilton who had fitted Medium tyres, while Charles was on Hards, but he still managed to finish on the podium in third place. As for Carlos, he fought tooth and nail in the first few laps after the restart, fending off George Russell, also on the Medium tyre, the Spaniard claiming fourth place in the race and in the championship standings.
One more leg of the American triple-header. Tomorrow, the team leaves Mexico and heads for Brazil which hosts the Sao Paulo Grand Prix next Sunday at the Interlagos circuit. It is the third from last race of the season and brings the curtain down on this trio of races in the Americas.
Charles Leclerc #16
It was a tricky one. I was caught between the two Red Bulls at the start and unfortunately Checo (Perez) and I touched, which led to me picking up some damage on the car and to Checo retiring.
Later on, we struggled a bit on the Hards after the restart. Lewis (Hamilton) was really strong on the Mediums and had very little degradation, getting ahead of us.
It’s not where we wanted to finish, but we maximised our result.
Carlos Sainz #55
It was a long and tough race today, having to manage tyres and temperatures constantly. Looking at the pace today I think the result is the maximum we could have achieved.
Both the starts were quite chaotic, but we kept it together and stuck with our preferred strategy of doing one stop, which we had opted for before the red flag. In the end we scored some good points for the team and now we focus on the upcoming Sao Paulo race with the Sprint format.
Frédéric Vasseur - Team Principal
When you start on the front row, a P3 and a P4 finish is not the result you aim for, but, given how the race was run, I think we almost did the best we could with our car today. We knew the start would be tricky because of the long run to the first corner, in which the slipstream can have a big effect and for sure our start today was not ideal.
In the first stint we were on the pace, but then, like many others, we struggled at the restart with the Hard tyre. And this is what cost Charles the position to Lewis, who was on Mediums, but for us it would have been really on the limit to get to the end on that tyre, if we had taken the opportunity to fit it again when the race was stopped.
We need to keep working to reduce the performance difference between our qualifying and race pace, given that, especially on the Hards, we struggled too much compared to our rivals who were able to manage the tyres better than us.