Sainz seizes swansong Ferrari win as Perez endures home race horror show

Is there any more meaningless and, frankly, insulting cliché in sport than to claim a competitor was victorious against their opponents because they “wanted it more”?

To say that a driver on the Formula 1 grid is not motivated by an all-consuming desire to succeed and prove themselves to be the best in the world is to dismiss the intense commitment, sacrifice and pressure they must endure simply to reach the world championship to begin with.

Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen’s immense success over the last decade is testament to their talent, their techniques and their teams. But that does not mean their rivals have not spent every waking moment of their lives longing and striving to join them – just ask Fernando Alonso.

Ahead of the 2024 Mexican Grand Prix, Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz Jnr and Red Bull’s Sergio Perez could not have been much further apart from each other on the grid, but the pair were united in their desire for a strong race on Sunday. Sainz, on pole, was desperate to secure a fourth victory before leaving Ferrari. Perez started down in 18th, carrying the hopes of his entire nation upon him, and needing to justify his continued place in one of the best cars on the grid.

At nearly 800 metres from pole position to the first corner, the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez boasts the longest start run of any circuit on F1’s calendar. With the two leading drivers in the world championship, Max Verstappen and Lando Norris, immediately behind him on the grid, Sainz knew trouble would be chasing him from the moment the lights went out at the start.

At the back of the grid, Perez was eager to take full advantage of the generous pit straight ahead of him to gain positions at the start. So eager, in fact, he failed to stop inside his grid slot at the end of the formation lap, earning a five-second penalty before the starting lights had even begun to cycle on. It hadn’t seemed possible that he might slip up earlier in the race than last year, but he did.

When the race began, Verstappen was the first of the front row starters to 100kph. By the time their speeds had doubled, the Red Bull’s front axle was already alongside the Ferrari’s. With Verstappen to the inside, he appeared to have the dominant position approaching the first corner.

With Norris thinking of his championship challenge behind the pair and playing it safe, Sainz took the room available to the left to try and fight back around the outside. As he rounded turn one, he quickly realised that there would be no room waiting for him at the exit and bailed out across the grass, cutting turn two completely and rejoining the track ahead.

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Without instruction or discussion, Sainz immediately yielded the lead back to the Red Bull on the run to turn four. But behind them, the yellow flags were flying. A squeeze in the mid-pack between Pierre Gasly, Alexander Albon and Yuki Tsunoda sent the RB driver spinning into the outside barrier at over 250kph, fortunately avoiding any of the cars in front of him as he did so.

As Tsunoda climbed safely from his car and Albon pulled off the circuit with terminal suspension damage to his Williams, the Safety Car was deployed. Verstappen sat in the lead ahead of Sainz with Norris in third and Charles Leclerc in fourth. The two Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell sat fifth and sixth, while Perez took advantage of the drama ahead of him to reach 13th.

The race restarted at the beginning of lap seven, with the leader timing his launch at the apex of turn 13 in front of the tens of thousands of fans packing out the stadium. Verstappen’s restart allowed him to avoid pressure heading down the pit straight, but Sainz stuck with the Red Bull over the following laps.

At the start of lap seven, Sainz used a slipstream and DRS to pull within three tenths of a second of Verstappen approaching the braking zone for turn one. Rather than wait for a better opportunity, Sainz went for it.

“With Max, you need to be determined, you need to be decisive,” Sainz later explained. “If you’re not, you’re never going to pass him. And in that case, I think I caught him a bit by surprise and I could make it stick.”

Although he had an awkward line through turn two, a second dose of DRS on the exit of turn three helped the Ferrari to defend from any counter attack behind. But rather than look to reclaim the lead, Verstappen instead had to worry more about Norris behind him, who immediately pulled within DRS range thanks to the pair battling ahead.

Seven days on from their latest controversial battle in Austin, Norris was wary of what awaited him if he dared to try and attack his championship rival. But after following the Red Bull through the first chicane, Norris got a run on Verstappen approaching turn four and dived to the outside. He found, of course, no room at the exit and after wheel-to-wheel contact between the pair, Norris took to the grass and missed turn five, emerging ahead of both Verstappen and a likely surprised Sainz.

Norris let Sainz by but kept ahead of Verstappen. Knowing the McLaren would likely have the superior pace to be able to pull away from him, Verstappen desperately threw his car into the left-hander at turn seven in a bid to compromise his rival, with both cars leaving the track.

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“This guy is dangerous,” Norris lamented over the radio as race control immediately announced they would investigate the two latest examples of contentious on-track action involving the two leading drivers in the championship. After studying both incidents, the stewards handed Verstappen two separate 10-second penalties, deeming he forced Norris off track both times. That effectively ending any hopes of Verstappen taking further points out of his rival that afternoon.

Leclerc gained the most from the fighting between the two championship rivals for the second time in a week, passing the pair as they ran off track, making it a one-two for Ferrari at the front of the field. Verstappen remained ahead of Norris, for now, while the two Mercedes were engaged in their own private battle over fifth behind.

Further back, Perez was now up to 11th place and had caught up to Liam Lawson ahead of him. With DRS approaching turn four on lap 18, Perez cut from the outside to the inside in an effort to pass the RB, only to find Lawson had no intention to make it easy for him. Like Norris, Lawson was pushed off track, but unlike Norris he opted to try and make the following corner, with the two making contact as they did so.

Lawson kept the position, while Perez was now sporting a brand new hole in his right-hand sidepod as a legacy of their clash. Perez was later warned by race engineer Hugh Bird that he had lost around 60 points of downforce as a result, which made his prospects of recovering into the points much more difficult. Perez pitted soon after, but then appeared to do the same to Lance Stroll at turn four that his team mate had done to Norris, but received nothing in the form of any penalty from the stewards.

The leading drivers had all started on medium tyres and were each on a one-stop strategy. Verstappen was the first of them to pit at the end of lap 26, having to sit for so long in his pit box to serve his penalty that he was advised to turn the engine off while he waited. When he rejoined, he sat just ahead of his team mate in 15th place.

Hamilton was next in, followed by Norris, with Sainz the last of the leading drivers to make his stop, one lap after his team mate. Sainz had enough of an advantage to rejoin still in the lead of the race, with Ferrari now seemingly in control of the race with both cars ahead and no further pit stops planned. Norris had gained third place after Verstappen’s stop, with the two Mercedes also promoted to fourth and fifth.

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With Norris sure to take points out of his rival barring a disaster, he knew he would need to maximise the points he could get to deliver the biggest blow he could to Verstappen in the championship. Over more than 20 laps, he slowly reeled in Leclerc until he reached within DRS range of the Ferrari with just under ten laps remaining.

Leclerc was told to drive at his absolute best to try and keep the McLaren at bay to secure the one-two for his team, but the pressure was building. Eventually, at the end of the 62nd lap, the Ferrari ran wide at the exit of the final corner and slid onto the run off, second place disappearing in a cloud of dust.

“I tried to have the best exit possible,” Leclerc explained. “I could see that he was very close out of that corner. I lost the rear and then you forget about Lando and you just hope that you are going to take it back. I had one oversteer and then when I recovered from that oversteer, I had an oversteer from the other side and then I was like, ‘fuck…’”

Norris accepted the place and the three extra points gladly. He had gone from gaining potentially seven points on Verstappen to 10. Any hopes that might become 11, by adding the bonus point for fastest lap, were scotched first by Lawson, then Leclerc and Perez, the latter pair pitting for soft tyres at the end.

But out front, Sainz was not concerned with bonus points or even who was behind him. Ever since passing Verstappen early on, he had appeared in complete control of the race and had more than enough seconds in hand over Norris to check off the remaining laps until the chequered flag.

Perez may have had tens of thousands packing the grandstands cheering him on, but Sainz had his family and his partner watching him on from the garage. Although he had lost the lead at the start, Sainz had ultimately reclaimed it on the track and converted his pole position into victory. He took the chequered flag to claim his second win of the season, his fourth of the year and Ferrari’s second victory in seven days.

“I had a very good feeling coming into the weekend,” the winner admitted after the race. “I knew coming into it that we might have a chance to win and I’ve been focused, been on it all weekend.

On top of that, I knew my family was coming and my best friends, my girlfriend, a lot of people were here to support me. I said maybe destiny has something ready for me this weekend, that may be last win with Ferrari can come in front of them with all the support that I had from them all this year and in a great podium, a great place like Mexico City. I made it stick and you cannot imagine how happy and proud I am right now.”

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Norris was satisfied with second and the 10-point swing he had achieved against Verstappen in the championship – even if he knew that he needs more to have a hope of overcoming the deficit before the end of the season in Abu Dhabi.

“I’m 47 points behind still, so it doesn’t feel like I’m much closer than what I was,” he accepted. “But every point helps.”

Leclerc completed the podium, but as pleased as he was to see his team winning again and moving ahead of Red Bull in the constructors’ championship, he had to concede he was “just not fast enough” on Sunday.

Hamilton won the battle between the Mercedes team mates to claim fourth ahead of Russell with Verstappen ten seconds further back in sixth. Kevin Magnussen secured his best result in two years in seventh with Oscar Piastri rising from 17th to eighth ahead of Nico Hulkenberg and Pierre Gasly.

At the end of a miserable home grand prix weekend, Perez was the last car running, capping another low moment of another low season. In spite of how eager he had been to make his fans and his family proud – or perhaps because of it – he had not come close to scoring points. After the damage suffered from their clash early on, Perez pointed the finger at Lawson for his failure to reach the top ten.

While another poor performance will only increase speculation about Perez’s future, Sainz has already had to make peace with his departure from his beloved Ferrari at the end of the season. But after watching his team mate win thrice since his own last win in Australia, Sainz was relieved to finally get a second win of his own before leaving Maranello.

“I think it could have been quite easy for me to lose a bit of motivation and to lose a bit of the drive to make it happen, but those three weeks of break served me well,” he explained. “I managed to regain a bit of the determination and the drive that I needed for these last five, six races of the season.

“It’s not an easy year but I’m proud of the way that I’ve managed to keep myself in it and obviously trying to help the team now as much as I can to win this constructors championship, because it would be the perfect goodbye for me.”

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