1 Verstappen romps to record-breaking victory
It was a case of déjà vu all over again – at least in terms of the podium – as Max Verstappen won the 2022 Mexico City Grand Prix from Lewis Hamilton and Sergio Pérez, an exact recreation of the finishing order from the previous year. There was an element of familiarity, too, in the race itself: remarkably incident-free and cautiously processional, a consequence of drivers having to manage their tyres carefully in the thin air of Formula 1’s highest track.
Different, though, were the circumstances of the championship. Last year there was all to play for in the title race; this time around the Mexico City GP was a dead rubber so far as the drivers’ and constructors’ titles were concerned. All that remained was for Max to pass the record of 13 wins in a season, a mark he equalled in the US GP the previous weekend.
Verstappen did much of the heavy lifting on Saturday by outqualifying both his team-mate, Sergio Pérez, and the Mercedes pairing of Lewis Hamilton and George Russell. While this was perhaps Mercedes’ best chance of winning this season, since the altitude negated much of the high drag
