The Mexican Grand Prix was a processional affair for long periods of the race. But differing strategies eventually produced a dramatic battle at the end.
The two Red Bull drivers diverged on strategy when the Virtual Safety Car came out on lap one. Daniel Ricciardo made an early pit stop for medium tyres, and 20 laps later was instructed to let his team mate through into fourth place.
However they crossed paths again late in the race. Verstappen made an unsuccessful bid to pass Nico Rosberg for second place and fell back into the clutches of Sebastian Vettel.
This set up a controversial end to the race. Verstappen cut turn one trying to keep Vettel behind and was eventually given a five-second time penalty which dropped him to fifth behind Vettel and his team mate.
But at the time of writing the full implications of the jockeying for positions in the final laps is not yet known. Vettel remains under investigation for squeezing Ricciardo as they disputed what turned out to be third place.
2016 Mexican Grand Prix lap chart
The positions of each driver on every lap. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan, click name to highlight, right-click to reset. Toggle drivers using controls below:
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2016 Mexican Grand Prix race chart
The gaps between each driver on every lap compared to the leader’s average lap time. Very large gaps omitted. Scroll to zoom, drag to pan and right-click to reset. Toggle drivers using controls below:
2016 Mexican Grand Prix
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- 2016 Mexican Grand Prix team radio transcript
lubhz (@lubhz)
31st October 2016, 11:58
The race chart shows that RIC’s last stint is very impressive! VET complaining that ‘VES is backing me up to RIC’ is totally unreasonable. RIC would catch both of them regardless.
Patrick (@paeschli)
1st November 2016, 7:34
A 70 lap stint from Palmer, not bad…