As often happens in recent years, in Mexico, Scuderia Ferrari failed to replicate the unexpected qualifying result (where the Maranello team locked out the front row) over the 300 km race distance. In truth, shortly after 9 PM (Italian time), the Saturday feat was quickly nullified by an unlucky start for the red cars, which Max Verstappen managed to turn into a lead in turn 1.
To be fair, even though Charles Leclerc’s car was missing the left endplate after Sergio Perez’s reckless maneuver, the Monegasque driver’s pace was consistently strong compared to the rest of the field. So good that the Ferrari man managed to extend the first stint until the 31st lap to try to make the hard compound last until the end of the race. The collision involving Kevin Magnussen and the resulting race neutralization required a complete redefinition of the strategic scenario. Ferrari and Mercedes both had the same tire availability: a set of new hards and a set of used mediums.
Mercedes, benefiting from superior tire management, chose an aggressive strategy, using the medium compound from their Q1 run on Saturday. Ferrari opted for a conservative approach, continuing with the hard tires in the hope that the degradation of the mediums on the Silver Arrows would inevitably become evident in the final part of the race. The strategy worked only halfway, in the sense that Lewis Hamilton set an unsustainable pace for Charles, while Carlos Sainz managed to fend off George Russell‘s attacks and create a significant safety margin over the Mercedes #63. Nevertheless, Charles Leclerc, in “High Fuel” conditions and with a “wounded” car, had covered a good 31 laps at a decent pace, a fact that cannot have escaped the strategists in Maranello.
Both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz had a set of used medium tires from Q1 with just 3 laps of “wear.” At the time of the restart, there were exactly 35 laps to go with approximately 50 kg of fuel. Why not take risks at least by diversifying the strategies? Was this a choice shared with the drivers or a dictate from the pit wall aimed at maximizing the Maranello team’s overall performance? We will never know; however, different choices would have been useful to at least gather data on the performance decay of the two tire compounds. One hypothesis is that the two “Carlos” are shadowing each other to gain the upper hand in the drivers’ standings, aligning their choices. Staying within the realm of conjecture, such an approach would be a sign of little courage on the part of the drivers. After all, the 2023 Formula One championship for the Prancing Horse will not be remembered unless for Carlos Sainz’s feat in Singapore at the Marina Bay street circuit.
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For the drivers, the perspective is quite different because fighting for supremacy in the internal hierarchy carries significant weight, especially with the renegotiation of the next collaboration contract on the horizon. The Mexican Grand Prix leaves a bitter taste not because of Red Bull’s practically certain victory but because of the lack of courage in trying to upset a script that seemed already written before the race restart at the 4.304-kilometre Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez in Mexico City.
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