Christian Horner seemed pretty convinced on Sunday evening in Mexico - Daniel Ricciardo is “back to his old self”.

If the old motorsport cliche ‘you’re only as good as your last race” is true, then Ricciardo is now very good indeed.

And Sergio Perez, the man whose Red Bull seat Ricciardo is expressly targeting, is now very bad - doing his best it seems to hand Lewis Hamilton second place in the 2023 Formula 1 world championship.

The obvious temptation in the wake of what we saw in Mexico is to declare Perez finished and Ricciardo now more than ready to fill his boots. What is Red Bull waiting for?

Well, for one thing the team wants a bit more data - on both drivers. Ricciardo’s Zandvoort hand injury frustratingly delayed his reacclimatisation process, while Perez needs to show he can put this season’s over-ambition behind him and get back to being a proper support act to Max Verstappen.

Red Bull's theory for where Perez has gone wrong

Red Bull is of the view Perez’s struggles this season have been primarily mental - that the way Verstappen comprehensively overturned Perez’s pole advantage in Miami, then won in Monaco as Perez crashed needlessly in Q1, before utterly dominating the next race in Spain, scrambled the brain of a driver who thought he was a genuine title contender after claiming two wins from the first four races.

What’s followed is a familiar story of a slightly limited driver overreaching in his attempts to make up for lost points - motor racing’s version of the sunk cost fallacy.

He irritated Red Bull by failing to keep within track limits in Austria, when he was easily fast enough to qualify on the front row. Either side of that, he looked shorn of confidence in the sort of tricky weather conditions Verstappen makes almost everyone else look utterly ordinary in. In Hungary, Perez decided to go for broke in FP1 - do what Max does, get bang on the pace within the first five laps, maybe sooner - but stuck it in the wall instead.

The qualifying form remained iffy, but through that stretch of races in the middle of the season Perez was still just about getting the results: third at the Hungaroring, second at Spa, third (on the road) at Zandvoort (before a pitlane speeding penalty was applied), second again at Monza.

But since Red Bull’s anomalous Singapore disaster Perez’s race performances have dropped off alarmingly. Japan was a front wing-destroying nightmare; In Qatar he couldn’t beat the two Alfa Romeos after starting from the pits; at Austin he was nowhere near making the podium before the disqualifications, and in Mexico he took himself out at the first corner.

Mexico in particular suggested a driver who is not thinking clearly in the heat of the moment. This will perturb Red Bull when it’s clear the RB19 is so good that neither Verstappen nor whoever is driving the other car really needs to go all-out at the first corner.

More often than not these days, even if he makes a bad start or starts further down the grid, Verstappen is relaxed because he knows the race will come to him. Why on earth did Perez think he needed to get everything done at the first corner? What he did was not rational.

What Ricciardo has proved

Meanwhile, Ricciardo outqualified Perez and started fourth in an AlphaTauri that hasn’t looked like troubling that part of the grid ever since Pierre Gasly left for Alpine.

'Something's up. This isn't normal' - Ricciardo's McLaren plight in his own words

Read more

And Ricciardo did the business in the race, too - he scored the team’s best result of the season and almost beat George Russell’s Mercedes for good measure. Thus proving the McLaren stint was anomalous and that Ricciardo totally isn’t fundamentally limited by this new generation of ground effect F1 cars, right?

“That’s a bit of a fallacy to say,” was Horner’s response to a direct question about Ricciardo not syncing with this iteration of F1. “This sport is as much in the head as it is anywhere else and I think he’s back to his old self.

"You can see he’s relaxed, he’s confident and I thought this weekend, he came into the weekend fully motivated after a tricky Austin.”

Obviously it’s a great thing to see Ricciardo driving so well and feeling like he belongs in Formula 1 again - and wants to be here. Most drivers perform better when the environment around them is nurturing and supportive, but Ricciardo (and Sebastian Vettel was like this, too) is someone who really needs to feel that collective energy coming from inside his own garage.

That’s not to say McLaren gave him no support, far from it, but it’s obviously very difficult to give your best when you know the team no longer believes in you in quite the way it did before you turned up and started having stinker after stinker.

Is life alongside Verstappen actually appealing?

Perhaps this is similar to what Perez feels right now. He’s had all that repeated nonsense with Helmut Marko of course, and Marko has been so far out of line he’s had to issue a public apology. Horner talks repeatedly about Perez needing Red Bull to give him an arm around the shoulder. In Mexico we saw that happening visibly on the pitwall.

Could any current top F1 driver beat Verstappen in this Red Bull?

Read more

But Perez still won’t be able to escape the nagging feeling that he’s on a hiding to nothing here - Red Bull is Verstappen’s team, and whenever Perez gets too close for comfort there is a pretty quick course correction.

Each of the past two seasons for Perez has been a familiar story of the car ‘getting away from him’, etc. How do you get the most from yourself when fundamentally there’s just no way of consistently beating the guy on the other side of the garage? It must grind him down, as it did Valtteri Bottas during those years alongside Hamilton at Mercedes - a constant reminder that "yes, you are really, really good at this, but also just not quite good enough either, no matter how hard you try".

Ricciardo would do well to remember how he felt at Red Bull back in 2018, when Verstappen was a less complete driver than he is now. Red Bull wanted Ricciardo to stay, but he left anyway - partly because he didn’t believe in Honda’s promises and partly because Cyril Abiteboul offered him a mega-bucks Renault contract. Dietrich Mateschitz matched that offer, but Ricciardo still left - also partly because it was clear Verstappen was in the ascendency at Red Bull and that situation was only going to become more ingrained.

Since then Ricciardo has had a couple of lucrative stints at different teams. At Renault he drove very well, but the team (as ever) just couldn’t deliver on its ambitious targets to catch F1’s leading works outfits while spending less money than they did.

Mark Hughes: Why Ricciardo gave up the seat he now so badly wants

Read more

McLaren is moving quite nicely now towards its goal of becoming a top team again, but Ricciardo wasn’t able to get anywhere near Lando Norris in that set-up - while Oscar Piastri (as a rookie no less) has made a much better job of things (no doubt for a far lower financial outlay, too).

So Ricciardo now hopes to use AlphaTauri as a springboard into Perez’s Red Bull - by 2025 if not sooner. Maybe all that repeated talk from Perez about “I have a contract” and Horner saying it’s Red Bull’s “intention” to stick with Perez in 2024 is just a standoff about money.

If Red Bull really wants Ricciardo in that seat, it could just pay Perez off as McLaren did Ricciardo - and then anyone available that Red Bull fancied could fill the vacancy. Maybe Red Bull could convince Perez to swap seats with Ricciardo - that a year rehabilitating at AlphaTauri could refresh his head and rebuild his reputation in the way it did for Gasly, and for Ricciardo now too.

Would Ricciardo's pace translate to Red Bull?

But maybe also AlphaTauri is the perfect place for Ricciardo to remain in situ. Jonathan Eddolls, the team’s head of trackside engineering, spoke eloquently in Mexico about the work AlphaTauri has done to migrate Ricciardo away from Yuki Tsunoda’s set-up and extract more performance from Daniel specifically.

Eddolls suggested Ricciardo’s improved form in Mexico was down to having a stable and predictable car that he knows is going to do the “same thing, every lap, corner to corner”.

Well, the Red Bulls Verstappen has been dominating in have been called many things, but ‘stable and predictable’ are not among the adjectives usually associated with them.

On the oversteer/understeer spectrum, the Red Bull is always going to be more towards the extreme oversteer end. Alex Albon has talked in some detail about this - how he felt in the junior categories he preferred his cars more ‘on those nose’ than even Charles Leclerc did, and yet the amount of front end Verstappen could utilise was way in excess of what Albon could cope with.

We know Perez is further towards the understeer end of the spectrum in terms of his preference. Understeer is what tends to give you stability and predictability in a car. The front end overwhelms the slip angle of the tyre before the rear does, the driver feels that and it telegraphs what comes next in terms of the rear rotating.

The F1 drivers who can drive around a car's problems - and those who can't

Read more

Understeer is always slower, because the car simply doesn’t turn as quickly, but it makes things a bit easier to manage at high speed, requires you to do a bit more manipulation with the brakes to get the car turned in at low speed (but you can be proactive rather than reactive) and it also creates the compound benefit of helping protect the rear tyres, because biasing load/weight/grip etc to the rear means better traction and a lower chance of over-slipping the rear tyres and overheating them to oblivion.

An oversteering car will always be quicker turning into the corners, but you need your wits about you to ensure the slides are not too violent, don’t go on too long and don’t prevent you from using that super-sharp turn-in to get back on the throttle nice and early for whatever follows next.

It will nearly always be very useful over a longer stint to have the car biased towards understeer - especially if the circuit characteristics and conditions impose a rear limitation. Usually these are the circuits with more slow corners than fast ones, or when the conditions are so hot the rear tyres tend to overheat before the front ones do.

Mexico City is one such circuit - mostly slow, 90-degree (or more) corners, where the rears are nearly always giving up before the fronts, especially last weekend when the track was getting progressively hotter and the softest-compound tyres were in use. It’s a similar story in places like Baku or Monaco, or Singapore or Jeddah - street circuits where you’re always worried about poor traction and over-stressing the rear tyres.

On these types of circuits, the necessary understeer that needs to be dialled into the car almost imposes an artificial limit on a driver like Verstappen, who will be wanting more front end in the car which he simply won’t be able to have. He can drive perfectly well with the understeer, too, but he just won’t be as devastating as he usually is.

There were only four circuits in 2018 where Ricciardo outpaced Verstappen in a straight fight: Baku, Monaco (even before Verstappen crashed in FP3), Mexico and Abu Dhabi.

Perez has only genuinely been ahead of Verstappen in four places too: Imola 2021, Jeddah 2022, Monaco 2022 and Baku 2022.

In 2023, Mexico, Singapore and Baku are the places he’s been closest to Max in a like-for-like comparison - a tenth to a tenth and a half off. Elsewhere, where the tracks are more expansive and the set-up compromises more difficult, the gap has mushroomed.

On the ultra-fast front-limited circuits, where the outside front tyre takes the most punishment (think Silverstone, Spa or Suzuka), Perez has been nowhere near Verstappen’s level.

As Lance Stroll said in Qatar, the cars are more ‘on the nose’ this year, partly thanks to Pirelli altering its front tyre construction for this season to make the cars less prone to understeering. This won’t have helped Perez and perhaps helps explain why he is further off Verstappen’s pace this year compared to 2022.

It perhaps also helps Ricciardo in his current 'rehabilitation' phase. He is very sensitive to what the outside front tyre is doing and wants to be able to lean hard on that tyre to carry big entry speed into corners.

He wasn’t too bothered about the rear being loose in his prior Red Bull days, and AlphaTauri is finding now that it can dial a bit more front end into the car for Ricciardo because he trusts it’s going to stick, whereas the McLaren was so inconsistent in its balance through the corner entry phase that Ricciardo couldn’t compute what to do automatically. It required too much dextrous work with the pedals, when what he wants to do is steer the car and know it will respond in a predictable way.

When Ricciardo was the best driver in F1 (twice)

Read more

So it would seem Ricciardo’s natural style maybe dovetails a bit better than Perez’s does with what Verstappen wants from the car, but it’s also very likely that the handling traits of the Red Bull have migrated further towards the extreme end of the scale, with Verstappen having spent five further seasons at the helm of that team.

Perhaps Ricciardo can dial himself up towards that better than Perez can, but there’s no doubt it will take him out of his comfort zone more often than not - especially on those more complicated circuits where the set-up trade-offs are more difficult and the driver therefore needs to be more flexible in what they will accept from the car in terms of some erratic or less-than-ideal behaviour.

Eddolls talked about how the AlphaTauri is a predictable car to drive, it just lacks aerodynamic load. But that’s the really tricky bit - every F1 team would like to add load without making the car more difficult to drive, but it doesn’t really seem to be possible without accepting a much lower threshold of overall performance.

Verstappen makes the RB19 look easy to drive, but it's doubtful that it is. The Mercedes is a “capricious beast” (James Allison’s description), the Ferrari is “peaky” (Carlos Sainz), Norris hates how much he has to vary his technique to get the most out of the improving McLaren, and even a driver as renowned as Fernando Alonso cannot drive the Aston Martin properly in its latest aero specification. The AlphaTauri is probably now in the fight to be considered the next best car after that, along with the Alpine - and the Williams when it’s on-song.

And next year’s version will take the benefit of even more Red Bull-made parts. The 2024 AlphaTauri is likely to incorporate Red Bull’s pullrod front suspension, as well as taking updated rear suspension, engine and gearbox - so Ricciardo would be near-enough driving a Red Bull anyway next year, mechanically speaking at least. He would also very much be that team’s lead driver - with his exact preferences tailored for, very much like Gasly was until the end of last season.

AlphaTauri needs Ricciardo

Horner spoke about how Ricciardo “just brings a bunch of experience” to AlphaTauri and has “put a bit of direction into their engineering, and they’re benefitting from that”. This shouldn’t be underestimated for a team that Red Bull in the post-Mateschitz world really wants to see stand better on its own two feet. Having a capable, confident and experienced lead driver is vital for that mission to succeed. AlphaTauri probably needs Ricciardo at this point much more than Red Bull Racing does.

Gary Anderson: How F1 2023's worst car was finally sorted

Read more

Perhaps Perez could fulfil that brief too, but certainly it would be to Red Bull’s overall benefit to have an experienced, race-winning driver leading that team. That very well might not be enough for Ricciardo. He’s still ambitious, clearly, but it’s difficult to see how he becomes anything more at Red Bull than what Perez is supposed to be: a capable supporting act to Verstappen. Of course, Perez isn’t that at present, which is why there’s so much hype around the renewed and reinvigorated version of Ricciardo we saw in Mexico.

But that was Mexico - basically one type of corner to build the set-up around, rear-limited, understeer required, Verstappen (still dominant ultimately) not quite able to maximise his abilities (at least over one lap), Ricciardo closer than Perez was, true, but Perez also closer to Max than usual. What about elsewhere? Eddolls admitted Mexico City is one of the circuits that particularly suits AlphaTauri’s platform.

“There are certain events where we come with a baseline set-up that's a bit different to normal,” he explained. “A Monaco, a Singapore, a Baku in particular.

"The car mechanically is very good. Everyone's struggling with grip, so if you've got a good car, mechanically, that helps.

"With our aero package here, we haven't quite got the efficiency of some of the others, but for this track, we've got the load in the corners. And it does suit this event.”

And then still the nagging doubt about how Ricciardo really compares to Yuki Tsunoda, who was faster in FP3 in Mexico (despite missing FP1 entirely) but wasn’t able to go head-to-head with Ricciardo in qualifying because of an engine penalty, so towed him around in Q1 and Q2 instead. If Red Bull wants Perez out regardless, it needs to make sure Ricciardo really is the fastest guy outside of Verstappen on its current roster - or find someone else.

That’s why everyone in this scenario needs a bit more time.

Ricciardo - to show that he really is more than a one-track pony in an AlphaTauri that was very well suited to that circuit. And Perez - to show Red Bull that he can actually get his head back in this game before it really is too late.

The two-and-a-bit years that Audi has before its Formula 1 team starts a grand prix for the first time will go by very quickly - assuming the project makes it that far.

Audi has a huge amount of work to be ready for its F1 debut. There has been speculation in the F1 paddock for some time that it is not making the progress it needs to with its 2026 team and engine. This could easily be the usual games of distorted rumours among soon-to-be-rivals but every decision between now and 2026 will influence whether a competitive Audi emerges or it proves to be an expensive mistake.

It does not have long to get things ready for 2026, and if it fails to make the most of these intervening years it will not get an opportunity like this again – it will be playing catch-up while also competing in F1.

There are also rumours that have swirled for a while of some board-level uncertainty over the project. Works F1 programmes dependent on board-level support are known to become very vulnerable very quickly if circumstances change, although suggestions Audi might be getting cold feet and want to pull the plug on the project before it ever gets to the grid have been played down.

That does not mean it's plain sailing to 2026, though.

HUNDREDS OF MILLIONS INVESTED

F1’s big new addition for the 2026 rules is playing catch-up against the established teams and engine manufacturers.

The brand-new Audi engine project is being developed in parallel with the gradual takeover of Sauber, the team Audi will eventually own a majority stake of, with a clear goal: be ready to be competitive from the start in 2026 and fight for wins within three years of entering.

To get Audi on board, F1 and the FIA agreed a big overhaul of the engine rules, eliminating the MGU-H and uprating the MGU-K so that the electrical power is almost equal to that of the internal combustion engine. This was considered vital so that any incoming manufacturer had a chance of being competitive against those who would have over a decade of turbo-hybrid engine experience by 2026.

By signing off on the F1 project in 2022, Audi gave itself three and a half years to prepare its engine facility and build a competitive engine. Concessions for new manufacturers also meant more money to spend than those already competing - this year, for example, Audi has been allowed to spend $105million. It started the project already in 2022 before the engine spending cap was introduced, so money has already been spent on top of that. Another $105m is permitted in 2024 and $100m in 2025.

How the Audi F1 engine project will work

Read more

This cost comes on top of what will doubtless be tens of millions spent on infrastructure. The Neuburg facility where Audi’s Dakar, Formula E, DTM and Le Mans cars have been built since 2014 has been expanded, and an all-new building housing test benches is in the works and slated for completion by early 2024. More than 200 new employees have been recruited and the team should be 300-strong by the end of this year.

Most of the technical infrastructure should be in place this year too. Single-cylinder dyno testing has been conducted since the end of 2022, with a full power unit targeted to run on the dyno before this year ends. Audi has previously stated its ambition of having a test engine ready to run in a mule car in 2025.

Judging its progress is impossible given the only snippets of 2026 work that circulate the paddock are based on hearsay. And there is plenty of time for any supposed early pecking order for the new regulations to change.

All that can be said of Audi is that it seems to have given itself the best chance of having a strong engine foundation. But the main concern is what that engine will be attached to.

WHERE IT'S RISKED WASTING A HEAD START

The terms of Audi’s step-by-step Sauber takeover were formalised by the end of last year, too - this meant Audi purchased a minority stake at the start of 2023, is expected to own half the team by the start of 2024, then be the majority shareholder (75% is often cited) by the start of 2025.

But the entry will not carry the Audi name until 2026. And some in F1 have the feeling that Sauber is treading water until then - whether that’s because of commercial or legal sensitivities around the Alfa Romeo title sponsorship expiring this year and/or the Ferrari customer engine deal that runs to 2025, or because the Sauber/Audi crossover has been too fragmented. At least in the beginning.

That has sounded some alarm bells about what Audi is doing because signalling its plans for 2026 gave it a good head start at making its race team as competitive as possible. This is not the same as, say, Mercedes buying the depleted Brawn team in late 2009 and having to basically build it up from a standing start in 2010.

Current driver Valtteri Bottas, who has intimate knowledge of the multiple title-winning Mercedes set-up, has said several times that these years are crucial for Sauber to ramp up: it has the potential to bridge the gap but it is not ready to be a top F1 team by a long way.

It’s been over a decade since it even finished in the top half of the constructors’ championship (sixth in 2012, above), although the rebuild job since it was saved from financial ruin in the mid-2010s has at least restored it to midfield respectability.

Kicking on from there, though, is a process that has encountered repeated setbacks. The team declined in 2023, having started the new technical rules in 2022 on the front foot, and this year had a change of technical director - with axed McLaren man James Key returning to Sauber, having left it several years ago.

Key is obviously a talented engineer and technical leader and is reuniting with his old McLaren boss Andreas Seidl at Sauber - but is it just a coincidence that the specific Seidl/Key combination had taken McLaren on a downward trajectory from which it has rapidly and sensationally recovered in 2023 since they departed?

As for Sauber itself, there continue to be operational issues even if the “stupid mistakes” that frustrated the team so much in 2021 have at least been reduced and the process of building up the workforce in Switzerland as well as improving the facilities, like the simulator, is ongoing.

The only way to accelerate Sauber’s process was for Audi to be as involved as possible before it becomes the majority shareholder, let alone in time for the full identity change in 2026. Bottas said this last year: “It depends on the support we’ll get from 2024 onwards, how much are they willing to support.”

There are concerns this was not maximised as well as it could have been to start with. Regardless of how competitive F1 is, and how realistic any team needs to be about how quickly progress can be made, if Audi was fully involved from the start then there would be more visible results by now.

That’s why, not long after Seidl took charge as Sauber CEO, there were indications he was pushing Audi to do more.

That basically means investing more money in the race team side - because outgoing majority owner Finn Rausing, who will retain a minority stake even in the Audi era, is not going to plough mountains of cash into a team he has agreed to sell. And Sauber clearly isn’t flush with cash, despite a cavalry of sponsors, as it has struggled to get up to the budget cap.

That likely means not spending as much as F1’s cost cap regulations allow for capital expenditure projects, too - along with AlphaTauri, Haas and Williams, Sauber now has $65m it can spend next year on CapEx, but that upper limit is useless if the funds don’t exist to hit it.

Changing that may well come down to whether Seidl was or will be successful in getting Audi to support Sauber’s advancements with its key infrastructure - both software and hardware - and a recruitment drive.

COULD AUDI REALLY DO A U-TURN?

It would be a hammer blow for F1 and the FIA if the manufacturer that is effectively responsible for significant engine regulation changes for 2026 did a massive U-turn and bailed out before actually joining the grid.

And it would mean an enormous loss of face for Audi and the VW Group, not to mention prompt some extremely hard questions over the enormous sums sunk into a project that never amounted to anything. And that is more relevant than making F1 and the FIA look silly.

Can Audi really win in F1 with Sauber? Our verdict

Read more

A full-on withdrawal before 2026 would be a huge surprise. But were senior Audi or VW figures keen to re-evaluate the F1 project, as has been suggested, then that need not be so dramatic. After all, there have been big changes at the top since Audi started chasing an F1 entry, and confirmed it last year.

Markus Duesmann’s departure as CEO this year followed the resignation of VW Group CEO Herbert Diess the previous summer. Both were vocal proponents of F1 projects, Duesmann for Audi and Diess for both Audi and sister VW brand Porsche.

The loss of these key figures who drove the project, especially Duesmann, was immediately considered as a potential threat to Audi’s F1 plan. Any automotive manufacturer’s F1 commitment is only as solid as its board’s interest. And if there really are some who doubt the need for Audi to have such an expensive motorsport project, they may be more vocal and influential without a committed Duesmann type plotting the course.

What Duesmann’s successor Gernot Doellner makes of F1 could be key and he is expected to publicly discuss the matter before the end of 2023. And it is always worth factoring in the potential for VW Group politics.

VW CEO Oliver Blume is also the Porsche CEO - and Doellner is a long-time Porsche man. Porsche was chasing F1 relentlessly for a long time and is seen by many as the better fit for F1. Yet Porsche is the brand with Le Mans and Formula E programmes while Audi has sacrificed a lot from its motorsport portfolio to join the F1 grid for the first time, killing its own planned Le Mans project and committing to significantly reducing its customer racing programme, too.

All of that is a messy background that may go some way to explaining why one rumour is if Audi backtracked on F1, it may be because the VW Group wants to try to shove the project across to Porsche. That would cause all manner of logistical problems, among other things, given Audi’s F1 headquarters can’t just be uprooted and rehoused somewhere at Porsche. And it is surely a no-go.

Whether there is any truth to this suggestion, or any of the Audi discourse of recent days and weeks, the very fact it is being discussed sums up the slightly chaotic discourse that has dogged VW’s pursuit of F1 for the last couple of years.

But while Porsche’s big, public and unsuccessful dalliance with Red Bull and a 2026 project of its own ultimately went down in flames, a rubber-stamped Audi works team that has had hundreds of millions spent on it already is surely not going to suffer the same fate.

To close it all down would reflect catastrophic and clouded corporate thinking on an unprecedented scale.

Audi might not be playing its impending F1 entry perfectly, and there are legitimate concerns about its prospects for 2026, but its strategy is not going to be that destructive.

Testing ahead of any new season is often full of intrigue - though rarely for as extraordinary a reason as the fire that disrupted Formula E's group running at Valencia.

The Race Formula E Podcast dives straight into the drama, with Sam Smith and Andrew van de Burgt on hand to discuss the day-one pit fire that halted the test and all the major talking points from the running that did take place before and after.

That includes a look at the fast-charging pitstops trialled at Valencia ahead of the 2024 campaign and how their introduction has been received, plus the latest calendar tweaks expected in the coming weeks.

Jaguar driver Mitch Evans and Gary Paffett are among the Formula E figures on hand to talk about fast charging, while the podcast also hears from Porsche boss Florian Modlinger - who discusses his team's title ambitions.

The exit of team principal James Rossiter and where that leaves Maserati, the potential for a surprise return of the Mercedes name to Formula E, and who might be able to take the fight to the pre-eminent Jaguar- and Porsche-powered cars are also delved into.

The Race Formula E podcast is available free to subscribe to from all good podcast suppliers, including Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

In the early stages of the MotoGP season, when Pecco Bagnaia was leaving big points on the table with crashes of varying degrees of 'you can't do that!' on Sundays, the sprint races were his best friend.

His reliable production in the new-for-2023 half-distance races meant he remained firmly at or near the top end of the standings, and was in a position to build a points lead rather than simply climb out of a championship hole when he hit his mid-campaign stride.

Fast forward to now, though, and the sprints are no longer Bagnaia's best friend. They are extremely not that anymore. And, with 13 points between him and the pursuing Jorge Martin, it's perhaps the sprints that should weigh the heaviest on Bagnaia's mind coming into the season-ending triple-header of Sepang, Qatar and Valencia.

The obvious first: more sprints means more points means more of an opportunity to recover a gap. Under the old format, 13 points would represent 17% of the maximum remaining points. Instead, it's just under 12%.

And if, say, Martin wins each of the remaining sprints, he will at the very minimum take nine points out of Bagnaia's 13-point lead, but quite possibly more.

The bigger problem, though, is that Martin winning each of the remaining sprints isn't just eminently possible but is probable, verging on likely.

Their comparison over the season shows only a minimal discrepancy - Martin has outscored Bagnaia by 12 points across all the sprints, Bagnaia has outscored Martin by 25 across all the Sunday grands prix - but pivoting to a more recent sample size, that of the last five sprints, obviously paints an entirely different picture.

The last five MotoGP sprints

Average finish

Martin 1.0
Bagnaia 4.6

Points scored

Martin 60
Bagnaia 28

Laps led (out of 62)

Martin 54
Vinales 8
Bagnaia 0

There's every chance that fact file would've looked even more lopsided if it had been a six-sprint sample including a dry Phillip Island contest on Saturday.

The sprint there had been shifted to Sunday due to less-than-promising weather forecasts to ensure the main race definitely took place - which it did, with Martin's failed soft-tyre gamble boosting Bagnaia's points lead. The sprint was ultimately shelved the day after, and understandably so.

Thai Grand Prix 2023 MotoGP rider rankings

Read more

But had it happened, in the dry, there was precious little indication that Martin was beatable there.

It is the kind of performance trend that had been at least partly expected coming into the season. Martin was always thought as one of the big potential beneficiaries of the sprint format, and so he has proven, although it's taken until this stage of the season.

But the pattern has been clear. Martin is far from unbeatable for Bagnaia on Sundays - you would still argue Bagnaia is the more effective operator over a full race distance with harder tyres - but in those earlier stages of the weekend the reigning champion currently has no answer to Martin.

Yes, Bagnaia isn't slow by any means, and yes, he perhaps didn't get the rub of the green in the Buriram sprint in particular. And he feels back to his best - "the positive thing we found it back, finally, my top feeling," he said in Buriram. "I was very strong all weekend."

But despite that, the sprint situation clearly weighed on his mind. He referenced it repeatedly after his second-place finish on Sunday, and acknowledged he was still "very angry" about the points loss there.

The overall trend is not just about Martin being innately better suited to the short-distance races than Bagnaia, of course, but about him starting the weekends in a stronger position, which he is doing very reliably, even if Bagnaia does seem to often arrive at perhaps a higher peak of pace towards the end.

Martin's Bagnaia-style win is a statement - but carries an asterisk

Read more

You'd rather be weak on Saturdays than on Sundays. Trundle around to fifth place in a GP while your rival wins, and you've just lost 14 points. Have the same thing happen in a sprint, and you're only down seven points.

But even if Bagnaia is confident he can see off Martin in the upcoming Sunday duels, and he has good ground to be confident, Martin's sprint form risks eroding his cushion and increasing the pressure hugely.

After all, there's reason to believe that, in normal circumstances, Martin will start each of the remaining weekends strongly and go well in the sprints in particular.

Sepang? Martin's the lap record holder there, and was over a second clear six laps into last year's grand prix - when he, admittedly, suddenly fell off under little pressure.

Lusail? Martin took pole there in his second-ever weekend (and led 18 laps!), and again last year on a Ducati GP22 he didn't particularly like.

Valencia? Two poles in two appearances, on the podium both times.

Mercedes may be involved in Formula E in some capacity again in time for the 2025 season via the manufacturer's engine division.

The Race has learned that Mahindra has held talks with the Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains division based in the UK, about a potential technical collaboration.

Mahindra currently has a partnership with the ZF Group which supplies components to the team's Gen3 technical package. A similar structure is being pursued with HPP, which is based just a few miles from Mahindra’s Banbury base in the UK.

How and what now: Inside Formula E's worst-nightmare 2024 start

Read more

Mercedes entered Formula E officially as a manufacturer for the 2019-20 season but had a preparatory campaign with the HWA operation the season before. The German manufacturer’s tenure in Formula E was an enormous success - with two drivers' and two teams’ titles over the 2020-21 and 2021-22 seasons.

But its stay was short with a notice of intention to leave the championship coming at the end of only its second full season in the summer of 2021.

The baffling reversible nature of Mercedes' Formula E exit

Read more

Now, a future involvement with one of the branches of its companies may mean its name becomes associated with the world’s only electric world championship once again through its expertise in EV component research, design and development.

The tie-up could involve engineering and design work being incorporated into Mahindra’s future powertrains, including motor and inverters, potentially as soon as the 2025 powertrain. This will be the second phase of an evolution of the Gen3 car that will race across two seasons in the 2025 season and the 2026 campaigns.

Mahindra is currently undergoing significant changes through its organisation and technical structure, with various technical staff changes set to be implemented and made public shortly.

These will lead several new faces in the outfit, while the current head of the team’s design department Lewis Buter is set to leave the team he has worked for since 2016. Butler was in attendance at Valencia last week but is working his notice until the end of the year.

Already confirmed at the team, working as a technical consultant, is former Mercedes F1 engineer Tony Ross, who is believed to be a key link for the possible HPP deal.

Formula E seeking another UK TV host after Channel 4 deal ends

Read more

Ross worked with HPP extensively in his time at the Mercedes F1 Team between 2011 and 2018, including as race engineer for both Nico Rosberg and Valtteri Bottas, and was a close liaison between the F1 team and HPP.

Speaking to The Race last month, Mahindra team principal Frederic Bertrand hinted at a change, saying that “Gen 3.5 will be slightly different".

“One thing which we realised was that we didn't have enough ownership on the way to develop but also on the way to push the car during the season,” added Bertrand.

“We will depend less from a global deal, but more from a supplier hardware approach, so we are less under one single supplier approach.

"But what is important is more in the philosophies - we want more capabilities internally to improve and be faster in the way we react and be more confident on the fact that we don't lose information between two or three different people dealing with the same subject.

“Generally, what we try is concentrating more on the work, be simpler, and then make sure that we deliver more from what we have.

“We don't have a defined and unlimited budget, so we need to make sure that we invest properly the money we have, where it has impact so there will be changes for 3.5.”

Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains was formed back in 1983 as Hubview Limited before becoming Ilmor Engineering Limited, which was founded by Paul Morgan and Mario Illien.

One of the initial shareholders of the company was Roger Penske, who integrated the company into a successful period for Penske in CART in the 1980s and 1990s.

Mercedes took a majority shareholding in the company in 2003 when it became known as Mercedes High Performance Engines, before a further name change in 2012 when it became Mercedes AMG High Performance Powertrains Ltd.

Haas heads to the scene of one of its biggest moments in Formula 1, experienced just 12 months ago, on the receiving end of a damning admission.

Kevin Magnussen's shock pole in qualifying for the 2022 Brazilian Grand Prix is unlikely to be repeated this weekend. But frankly so is the solitary point he would go on to score from there.

Only once in the last 10 races has a Haas driver scored a point, a run that has caused the team to drop from a competitive seventh in the championship to dead last after last weekend’s Mexican Grand Prix.

There, Nico Hulkenberg’s gutsy rearguard action came up short as, once again, Haas’s chronic tyre management problems caused it too much pain to bear on race day. By the end of the race, Hulkenberg was deliberately drifting the car, having taken the last lap “for myself”, saying that it “showed our tyre guys what some real slip is”.

Gary Anderson: Haas Red Bull-style F1 upgrade explained

Read more

The message, joking or not, was clear – the drivers cannot do more with this machinery. And when asked about championship rivals AlphaTauri and Williams scoring points yet again, Hulkenberg did not mince his words.

“It’s inevitable,” he said. “We’re paying a price for not bringing upgrades, for not finding performance.

“Hopefully it’s a wake-up call for everyone in the factory.

“At this rate you can’t compete in F1.”

What Hulkenberg said brought to mind something Guenther Steiner said after the Italian Grand Prix just a few races ago: “That’s where you end up when you cannot compete.”

This is the kind of rhetoric defining Haas’s season at its worst. But it’s also fair given the team has just dropped to last in the championship and, on the balance of things, deserves to be there. It also looks the least likely of the four teams ‘fighting’ for seventh to score points again this season. Hauling itself off the foot of the standings seems like a big ask.

It’s a more concerning situation because the last two races have been run with a major upgrade that has underperformed.

So, Hulkenberg’s comments are a damning indictment of the work that went into that package, which is also a potentially problematic signpost for 2024 given this is meant to inform Haas’s development direction.

Haas's insistent argument for keeping Andretti out of F1

Read more

“The key learnings are that we maybe expected a little bit more from the upgrade,” team boss Guenther Steiner has said ahead of the Brazil weekend.

“But then it’s still a little bit up and down because Austin was a sprint weekend with not a lot of testing, and Mexico had such high altitude.

“We didn’t have enough total downforce last weekend, so I still haven’t come to a full conclusion. The expectations were a bit higher, although it’s giving us the right direction for next year.”

It is a familiar story for Haas, which has shown itself immensely capable at hitting the ground running at the start of a season but equally has struggled to develop thereafter. That is a particular concern this year with more funding and a bigger development effort than before, which has still not manifested itself in a stronger development curve, and Haas finishing a season better than it started it still feels unattainable.

It is extremely difficult to do given it is F1’s smallest team with a unique structure, but Haas should still be capable of doing better than this – otherwise Hulkenberg would not be saying what he’s said, and Steiner would not be admitting that more was expected from the upgrade. They would just be shrugging, saying this is what Haas is and it’s just the reality they must accept.

Like at Monza, the race in Mexico had a mitigating circumstance attached – unique levels of downforce. It’s possible that the Haas in its current form, even when upgraded, does not produce the peak loads of its rivals to be competitive, but that at ‘normal’ tracks or races it can show its true potential.

If that’s the case then Brazil and Abu Dhabi (probably not Las Vegas in between) might be closer to what Haas experienced at Austin, the debut race for the package, which seemed to include some genuine bright moments.

“That was the first time and the first day where some positive signs and steps were seen,” Hulkenberg said before the Mexican GP weekend began.

“In terms of tyre management, this was one of the best races in a while for us. So, still exploring, still finding out and learning more about the package.

“And I hope there's more to come as we go.”

There was not in Mexico. But Haas will cling to flashes like it saw in Austin and believe all hope is not lost.

There will be bigger changes possible in the off-season, and the team’s track record of starting seasons well might suggest it handles development better when it is not having to juggle it alongside a live campaign.

But a lot of questions remain. How deep-rooted are these problems? Is the mild disappointment in the upgrade package a sign that Haas did not understand them, or how to solve them, as well as it thought? If that’s the case and even with this upgraded car it cannot compete now, can it be confident of competing better in 2024?

Has Haas played it too safe with its 2024 driver line-up?

Read more

There might come a point where the Haas model reaches its limit. Perhaps there is only so much a team with split resources and infrastructure can compete, especially when other teams – think Williams and Sauber – were once badly underperforming but have become more competitive and competent during Haas’s time on the grid.

And there’s another factor to consider too: where does team owner Gene Haas’s current approach lie in all this? For the last couple of years, the F1 team has effectively relied on Steiner finding ways to prop it up without its eponymous owner reaching into his own pocket.

It feels like the team might just be bumping against a ceiling. Which would explain why the same old season keeps being played out - start well, plateau, decline, with only the level of peaks and troughs changing.

Haas had essentially been left needing to adapt to survive. And it did. Now it needs to find a way, in the words of Hulkenberg and Steiner before him, to compete.

Mercedes chief technical officer Mike Elliott will leave the Formula 1 team, several months on from departing his role as Mercedes technical director.

Elliott swapped roles with James Allison in April earlier this year after Mercedes failed to make the gains it wanted last winter.

Why Mercedes got F1's new era so wrong

Read more

Mercedes made a poor start to the new ground effect technical rules in 2022 but persevered with its unique concept, one that became symbolised by a unique minimal sidepod design that Elliott consistently defended.

Having stuck with that concept for 2023 under Elliott's technical leadership, team principal Toto Wolff declared immediately after qualifying at the Bahrain season opener that it had made the wrong decision.

The team reverted its concept with a series of upgrades over 2023 with Allison replacing Elliott as technical director.

Elliott remained as the chief technical officer - a swap that was his choice according to Mercedes - but he's now left that role after a few months.

"Earlier this year, Mike moved into the role of chief technical officer to Brackley, focusing on developing a technical strategy to renew the team’s technical capability for the years ahead," a statement from the team explained.

"With this plan now in place and in the process of delivery, Mike has decided to take a break from the sport in the coming months, before deciding upon his next challenge."

Elliott called it a "great privilege" to be a part of Mercedes through its eight consecutive constructors' championship victories and seven drivers' title triumphs.

“Although the last two seasons have not seen us winning races in the manner we aspire to, they have tested us in many other ways – and forced us to question our fundamental assumptions about how we deliver performance," he said.

"During the past six months, I have enjoyed developing the technical strategy that we hope can provide the foundations of the team’s next cycle of success.

“I have decided that now is the right time to make my next step beyond Mercedes – first to pause and take stock, after 23 years of working flat-out in this sport, and then to find my next challenge.

"I would like to thank my team-mates for a fantastic 12 seasons together and wish them every success for the years to come.”

The Race says

Scott-Mitchell Malm

As the technical director under which Mercedes created its ‘no-sidepod’ design, to some people Elliott came to unfairly represent Mercedes’ flawed direction and its confused state in this ruleset. So, it may be that some view his departure now as an inevitability and a chance for Mercedes to finally move on from its difficult start to this ruleset.

Gary Anderson explains final Mercedes F1 2023 upgrade

Read more

But without knowing the ins and outs of the last 18 months at Brackley, it is uncharitable to frame Elliott’s time at the team and his exit like that.

First of all, he was an important member of the technical team throughout its domination of the championship, so his ability is beyond question. More recently, though he was the technical director, he was not a solo figure in the creation of the controversial sidepods or the faith Mercedes showed in them. He was just, given his position, the man who constantly had to either justify them or explain (repeatedly) that car concept goes beyond sidepod designs.

That said, Elliott seemed to feel he was not excelling in the role as he wanted to. Mercedes must have agreed to some extent as it green-lit him moving into the chief technical officer role, with Elliott’s predecessor James Allison returning from being CTO to be the technical director again.

Allowing that reshuffle showed Mercedes had no interest in throwing Elliott under the bus and axing him outright. He would have retained some input in Mercedes’ short-term firefighting and trying to rescue the 2023 car and plan for 2024 but had a bigger remit including the vital role of charting a course for the new technical regulations in 2026.

Whatever perceptions there may be of Elliott’s contribution to Mercedes’ underachievement at the start of these rules, he would not have held such a significant position for so long were he not highly rated and effective.

What we don’t know, of course, is how well he performed in the CTO role and – if it was all working as intended – why he would need to, or want to, leave now to work out what to do next.

But his career long preceded the roles he became better known to F1 fans in, so he may have decided that this is just a good time “to pause and take stock”, as he put it - with Mercedes seemingly reaching a better state of understanding of its current issues and, under Elliott’s guidance, setting itself up for a better future as well.

Having sampled top-level technical jobs at a truly great team, Elliott will probably find it difficult to find vacancies of a similar profile in F1, assuming he decides he even wants to remain involved in this world. But if he does, then his experience and his success at Mercedes - irrespective of the last couple of years - would make him an obvious asset to plenty of projects on the grid.

Wolff said he had "mixed feelings" about Elliott's departure.

“Mike has been one of the pillars of the team’s achievements over the past decade,” Wolff said.

"And it’s with truly mixed feelings that we say goodbye to him today. Mike is a fiercely intelligent technical brain and a great team-player; he has made a strong contribution not just to winning racing cars but also to building the culture of our team.

"But on the other side, it’s clear that he’s ready for new adventures beyond Mercedes – so I know this is the right step for him to take, too. He leaves the team today with our thanks for the effort, commitment, and expertise he has brought to the team over the past 11 years – and our very best wishes for the future.”

Last week’s test at Valencia was supposed to be a crucial opportunity for Formula E teams to test the boost devices that will supply fast-charging and help the reintroduction of pitstops. But it didn’t go to plan.

Eight of the chargers were in evidence at Valencia last week and initially several teams were happily using them both in charger and practice (dummy with no charge but accurate time simulation) mode in the Tuesday morning session.

How and what now: Inside Formula E's worst-nightmare 2024 start

Read more

Then came the fire in the WAE pit at lunchtime and the cars were forced to be parked for two full days before running could be resumed.

While the FIA and Formula E scrambled to first tidy up and then investigate that incident, it became clear that there would be a much-changed timetable, and while teams did use the chargers on Thursday and Friday, they were not implemented for the mock race that occurred on Friday morning.

That now means that several teams will go into the start of the season with very little testing of the chargers.

The question many were asking in Valencia was why was that the case. The answer is that the cell suppliers, a French-based company called SAFT that is part of the TotalEnergies group, were unable to supply sufficient cells for the chargers to service WAE and to supply the devices.

SAFT, who also supply the cells within the spec traction batteries that are used in all cars on the grid, supply several industries, notably aerospace, so the presumption is a supply and demand delay that dovetailed with the need to get the Gen3 cars traction batteries available to all for the start of the 2023 season last January.

Initially the charging pitstops were designed to come into use last season. Now, some of them are prepared but not enough to allocate to each running team which has been a cause of frustration for the promoters who are clearly the drivers of the need for the fast-charging in the first place.

A shared system of the units was in place last week in Valencia with The Race observing several pitstops in the Tuesday morning session.

🚨 FAST CHARGING FIRST-LOOK 🚨#FormulaE teams are testing the new attack charge boosters at Valencia ahead of their 2024 debut.

Eight of the units are being shared among the 11 teams this week.

Here's McLaren's Jake Hughes receiving an energy boost ⤵️

🗣️ @sniffermedia pic.twitter.com/PsKHPEOP5M

— The Race (@wearetherace) October 24, 2023

With a 33-second minimum charging stop time in place they clearly did not look dynamic but they went pretty smoothly

In endurance racing there is at least a choreography to stops and usually a tyre change bolted on too. Formula E cars being stationary for that amount of time will take some getting used to for fans new or old.

Even before the timetable shuffle in the remaining two days of the test, which included the Friday morning mock race (below) having simulated charging only, there was a cross-paddock opinion that much more time was needed for the equipment to be practised with.

“I would say, despite it being talked about for some while, it’s still relatively early days with the equipment,” Andretti team principal Roger Griffiths told The Race.

Formula E seeking another UK TV host after Channel 4 deal ends

Read more

“I think there are a number of things that still need to be worked upon. One is the sporting aspect of it, how that all works out, and that’s really what we’d hope to get a better understanding from the race running that we were due to do.

“There’s also the operational aspect of it, as in making sure all the equipment works and there’s the overall reliability of it. I think there’s still a fair few unanswered questions at this stage.

“Had the test gone as anticipated, we would certainly have a lot more information and would be in a good position to make the right decision with attack charge.

“I’m sure that the people involved are well aware of that and I’m very hopeful that a sensible decision will be made going down to Mexico and if it means that we have to postpone the introduction then maybe that’s the right thing to do. But if we come out of here and we’ve ticked all the boxes then why not go ahead?”

Quite a few boxes still remain unticked, that is clear. What seems to be the most likely and sensible option is that one of the two races at Diriyah at the end of January would be the most obvious implementation point for the charging pitstops.

The drivers and teams’ reaction to the charging stops is broadly the same with the majority reserving judgement until more is known about the sporting regs and when it is set to come into effect.

“The charger works by only being activated once the driver selects neutral in the cockpit,” McLaren team manager Gary Paffett told The Race.

“The charge will release once the charge is in the car and the car dash has a countdown for the driver to see for when their time is up effectively.

“The driver shouldn’t be able to leave the pitbox until that time is up. Then it’s up to our car controller to see that happening and then look at the pitlane and do the normal thing.”

That will be crucial as it is expected that 50% of the 22-car grid, will pit on the same lap, only no higher than 50% because double-stacking isn't allowed.

Then there is the scenario of some drivers having done the charge and possibly going a full lap down due to the length of the pit in/out and stop itself allied to the relatively short Formula E tracks that are used. Throw in a full course yellow or safety car and you have the ingredients for a lottery and on-track confusion.

Clearly, completing the pitstop under a full course yellow will be a massive win compared to someone who’s doing it on a live green track.

“If you get a safety car and there is a car a lap down do they then get waved through?” wondered Paffett.

“Because otherwise they’re going to stay a lap down.

“So that sort of thing is something that does need to be considered because otherwise if you’re going to get penalised massively by going a lap down either by having a blue flag or then being caught a lap down with a safety car and stay there.

“Then the guys at the back aren’t going to take the risk of doing it, because you’ve got a very good chance of ending up with the leaders. That’s something that Scot (race director Scot Elkins) and the FIA need to think about on how it’s going to impact the racing.”

From a driver’s standpoint several of them elected to wait for definitive opinions to be formed but the underlying theme was one of some scepticism over the plans.

“Right now, I’m on the fence about it,” Jaguar’s Mitch Evans told The Race.

“The racing has always been good in Formula E; will this make it better? I think it’s going to be highly unlikely that it will. but I could be completely wrong.

“I think it can’t be confusing for the viewers, once you have a car going a lap down and some cars can’t stop because there’s only one charger per team, the charging time at the moment is too long to double stack.

“The sport is already relatively confusing, so I think we have to be careful, but I see the angle that the FIA and the championship want to go down to try and make it work. It has to be right though.”

Envision returnee Robin Frijns reckoned that the current situation of such a paucity of testing was “never really good when so few haven’t really tested it.

“We tested something yesterday (Tuesday) and it didn’t really work as it should work. I think first we need to have everything sorted.”

Frijns also expressed some concern over the fact that customer teams already have less experience of the chargers after manufacturers first tried the units at a test back in September 2022 at Varano.

With non-manufacturer teams now having very limited testing time on track prior to Mexico City in January, there is a worry of parity in preparation across the grid. This could only be exacerbated if the devices are allowed to be used at a Gen3 Evo tyre test which is scheduled to test new Hankook products at the Mallorca Circuit next month.

McLaren’s Jake Hughes was slightly more positive in his assessment, saying that although the experience of the fast-charging pitstops was relatively “non-eventful in the car, I actually didn’t realise until I saw some video that even the LEDs are flashing whilst it’s being charged, I didn’t know.

“I’m just staring at what my dash and countdown, and every team will have gone a bit different with their software written and what they see in that aspect.

“But as a principle I really like it. Even before I was in motorsport you get used to watching high-level world championships doing pitstops, and I like that extra strategic element.

“I think the fans watching on TV will make sense as long as we do it correctly. Obviously it’s very fluid at the moment, I think they’ll be a lot of new software written up and down the pitlane to try and make it a bit smoother, a bit faster.

“There are certain aspects of it going from drive to neutral that some teams will be better or worse than others and maybe waste or win time in that period of the pitstop.”

All that is to come but first, the chargers need more testing before being implemented in the sporting format. With the off-line attack mode power boosts being much less effective with the Gen3 cars, perhaps fast-charging is the shot of energy in the arm that Formula E needs.

Either way, it has to be explained and visualized correctly for the paying public and TV viewers if the overall vitality of the pitstops is to be as high-energy as 2024-spec Formula E racing clearly needs to be.

The Mexican Grand Prix was objectively Aston Martin’s worst weekend of the 2023 Formula 1 season. Zero points for only the second time all year and star driver Fernando Alonso looking uncharacteristically out of sorts in a car he admitted he was “always not trusting”.

Most concerning of all is the fact this was just the second race since Aston introduced its last major aerodynamic upgrade of 2023, which doesn’t bode well given any development at such a late stage in this season will almost certainly have a bearing on 2024 as well.

Aston response to Stroll's shove badly missed the mark

Read more

This is what James Allison talked about when he described the update Mercedes introduced at the same time in Austin as a “bellwether” for next season - helping indicate whether or not his technical team is on the right track with next year’s development direction (which will also have a significant impact on 2025 as well).

Lewis Hamilton’s particularly strong performances over the past two races would suggest encouraging signs at Brackley, but at nearby Silverstone, the picture suddenly looks anything but.

It’s rare to see a driver of Alonso’s calibre looking so ordinary - spinning multiple times, getting overtaken for fun, and generally looking like someone with absolutely zero confidence in the car underneath him. He said after qualifying 13th on Saturday that his AMR felt like it was “on the edge of grip always” and “losing one or two tenths per corner” all around the circuit.

“This weekend has been particularly difficult for me,” Alonso added. “I always felt on the back foot and always not trusting the car. [It] seems we are not very confident now on the car, driving - we cannot extract the maximum and this is penalising us a lot.”

This is exactly the sort of sensation Lance Stroll explained amid his nightmare Qatar Grand Prix qualifying session. The subsequent upgrades - new diffuser, revised floor edges, new engine cover and beam wing - were meant to address this directly, and, in Stroll’s words, “make the car more predictable and easier to drive”. It would seem right now that this latest update has had the opposite effect.

The team itself was obviously concerned, because it elected to revert Stroll to the previous specification for the Mexico City Grand Prix and start him from the pits, having done similar with Alonso at Austin.

As team boss Mike Krack pointed out afterwards, a direct comparison with Alonso was rendered difficult because of the suspicion Alonso’s latest-spec car picked up damage running over debris at Turn 1 - but Stroll was certainly faster than Alonso in the race, and Krack even admitted “we can definitely say Lance’s performance was better than yesterday” when he too had been using the latest aero specification for qualifying.

A team reverting one car to an older specification because it doesn’t trust that the new package is adding performance - or at least adding performance that even a driver of Alonso’s considerable skill and dexterity cannot access - suggests it might have lost its way technically.

Krack denied this, trying instead to paint a picture of a team that has its collective head screwed on so tightly that it’s prepared to sacrifice an entire race in pursuit of scientific experimentation and understanding. To him, this is the behaviour of a team that knows what it is doing, not the irrational gambling of an outfit that doesn’t.

“When you are lost, you're rolling the dice,” Krack argued. “And you try things that are not reasonable. And this was not the case. We have quite focused engineering discussions, weighing options against each other. And while we want to go racing, while we want not to go from pitlane, it is very important that we understand the findings that we have in the data, and then we have to take such pragmatic decisions also sometimes. It’s not easy but I think it's the right way to move forward.

Winners and losers from F1's 2023 Mexican Grand Prix

Read more

“You [the media] like to push us into this 'being lost' direction, I can tell you honestly we're not. We are analysing our data, and we try to take the correct solutions from it.

“You have to understand that you have very different circuits. You could see yesterday, for example, up until FP3, there were teams on the back foot you would not have expected there, and vice versa.

“So, coming from Austin to here, it's not that straightforward that a car that works in Austin you just put it on the track here and everything works. We have seen the Alpines struggling, we have seen the Ferraris struggling up until FP3. And we had other cars that were very far in front and then were more at the back.

“So... it's not an easy task, to understand everything, how the track evolves, how the conditions are changing when you bring upgrades. And this is taking time and analysis, and I think it's important that at the end of the weekend you do a proper analysis and you move on.

“And the best solution to understand what you're doing is when you revert to something that you know, compare to something that you know. And I think that is always, from an engineering point of view, the best approach.

“We are open-minded, people are working together very very well. Back in mission control, back in all the areas that analyse data. And we remain with facts.

"There is nobody that is [too] proud [to make decisions like these] - pride is not in the way.”

Mexican Grand Prix driver rankings

Read more

But at the very least it suggests a team that doesn't understand how to make the latest update work on its car consistently. Sticking to the facts Krack is so fond of, those are that Alonso hasn’t got anywhere near qualifying inside the top 10 for the past two races. Before then, you couldn’t keep him out of it. In Qatar qualifying he was fourth-quickest, ahead of Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari and within six tenths of pole. In the USA and Mexico, Alonso couldn’t get within 1.1s of the pace.

Those are also two very different tracks - Austin is bumpy with a large range of corner types: high-speed interconnected sweeps, slow hairpins and some long and short medium-speed turns. Mexico City is smooth with mostly slow 90-degree turns punctuated by a couple of hairpins and a brief section of interconnected esses.

Whether it was the tricky set-up compromises of Austin, or the much more straightforward and rear-limited challenge of Mexico - incidentally the sort of track characteristic, save for the long main straight maybe, where Aston looked at its best at the start of this season - the updated AMR23 simply wasn’t working.

That doesn’t suggest a team on the right path with its development direction for 2024. It also doesn't look like the sort of output you expect from a top team with Aston Martin's considerable ambitions. Those teams tend to hit the ground running with updates they know are going to work, and which then do work - or at least don't leave the drivers feeling worse off despite two whole race weekends using them, Stroll's decent race to seventh in Austin notwithstanding.

Aston Martin's Le Mans plan can solve its F1 driver problem

Read more

In fact, this has increasingly looked like a similar case to the 2022 Ferrari - a very well-born concept with surprisingly strong pace relative to the opposition out of the box, but with very little headroom to effectively develop that concept further and reliably unlock more performance. Either the concept is fundamentally limited, or Aston doesn’t yet have a full grasp of what is needed to keep extracting performance from it.

To be fair, Aston isn’t alone in this. Ferrari has made several missteps after starting so strongly under these new ground-effect regulations and only recently has looked like a team with a proper handle on where its strengths and weaknesses are coming from. Mercedes too has looked lost for the best part of the past 18 months. Alpine has stagnated after also making a strong start to life in ground-effect F1; McLaren has only recently started to come good again after a nightmare 2022 and 2023 pre-season.

But it’s particularly concerning when you consider Aston talked its 2023 concept up as the basis for the next two seasons, with supposedly plenty of headroom for extra development. That aerodynamic potential doesn’t appear to be close to being realised at present.

McLaren proves the eureka moment is possible outside the confines of Red Bull’s base in Milton Keynes, but having appeared to have conquered that hurdle over the winter of 2022, Aston looks like a team that simply hasn’t progressed - if anything, through this season it has regressed. Even Alpine has outscored Aston (28-19) over the five races since Monza. Right now, Alonso might even prefer to be driving an AlphaTauri, or Alex Albon’s Williams…

“I don’t think it’s the set-up, we’ve been trying different set-ups a lot lately,” Alonso said, when asked by The Race how much of the current underperformance is down to the car lacking something versus the team lacking fundamental understanding under these regulations.

“Since Singapore, we’ve been experimenting a little more with the car, also in Austin we had the perfect opportunity starting on the pitlane to really experiment even further. We had the three sessions here, so I don’t think it’s just a set-up [thing], it’s more up to the package and us drivers to feel more confident.”

Krack does at least acknowledge there’s a fundamental mismatch right now between what Aston’s upgrades should be delivering and what the drivers can actually utilise to extract laptime. Alonso is an ideal reference for this - Honda-era McLaren was overawed at his capacity to be at the limit of an updated car from the first lap of practice, and Aston engineers say similar, so if he cannot do that then you know something is fundamentally wrong.

As Krack put it: “He’s won more than 30 races, he has two world championships, and if he starts spinning like that, there's something wrong. That is something we have to acknowledge. He was not happy with the car and we have to provide a better car.

“I said this before with Lance and it is the same here - if we do not provide a good car to our drivers they are passengers, so to say. There's nothing they can do. And this was the case for Fernando, I think from the beginning of the weekend.”

Ever since Alonso barely beat Albon’s Williams to seventh at Silverstone, and Krack declared afterwards the season would still be a success even if the team failed to score another podium all year, it’s felt like a campaign somehow ebbing gradually away from Aston Martin.

The team set itself an aggressive target to close the gap to Red Bull with upgrades, but if anything Aston has fallen further away as the car has changed - even though the RB19 hasn't itself changed a great deal. Although Alonso finished second to Max Verstappen in Canada with a major update added to the AMR23, it created some difficult characteristics in the car, particularly for Stroll, that the team has spent some time since unpicking.

It also didn’t really appear to add a great deal of performance across the spread of subsequent circuits - at least not in the obvious way McLaren’s Austria upgrade did. Since then, Aston has also taken a hit on the re-allocated Aerodynamic Testing Restrictions sliding scale, on account of its early-season overachievement. The extra limitations imposed by that June reset, plus a well-managed (by all accounts) but inevitably disruptive move to a new factory, can’t have helped Aston’s cause in the short term.

Alonso achieved that brilliantly opportunistic podium in the wet at Zandvoort, but having scored 131 points across the first nine rounds of 2023 (up to Austria) Alonso has only managed 52 points in the 10 rounds since - 19 of which were scored in one go in the Netherlands. Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, George Russell and Oscar Piastri are all outscoring Alonso at an alarming rate now. Even Alpine’s Pierre Gasly is only 44-40 down on Alonso over the past eight races.

After Canada, Alonso looked a genuine contender to maybe win a race this year and beat Sergio Perez to second in the drivers’ championship. Now, he looks like he will do very well to stay inside the top six or seven when this season is finished.

That, and Aston slumping from second to fifth in the constructors’ championship, is unlikely to please the Lawrence Stroll-spearheaded consortium that owns this team and has funded its considerable and expensive recent expansion.

“Lawrence is not happy - but we are not happy either,” Krack conceded. “When you have such a great start of the season and then you lose competitiveness, nobody is happy.

“We do not need him to tell us. But we have also to accept that he is not [happy]. It’s the situation we are in. We are a strong team and we will have to work collaboratively, open-minded, to get out of it.”

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella isn’t prone to hyperbole, so when he described Lando Norris’s Mexican Grand Prix race drive as “masterpiece” that resembled what many regard as Fernando Alonso’s greatest Formula 1 win, you can be sure it was something special.

Stella played an integral part in Alonso’s legendary victory from 11th on the grid in the 2012 European Grand Prix at Valencia as his Ferrari race engineer. He therefore knows exactly how well-executed that victory, which culminated in an around-the-outside pass on Romain Grosjean’s Lotus to take the lead, was.

He described Norris’s drive from 17th on the grid to fifth as “one of the best of all”, which for a man who has also worked with Michael Schumacher is the highest praise for Norris.

The best seasons by F1 title fight losers

Read more

“Will Joseph, his race engineer, turned to me and said ‘that’s one of the best of Lando’,” said Stella when asked to appraise Norris’s race. “I said, ‘Will, that’s one of the best of all.

“[There were] so many overtakes in Mexico when everyone was saying it’s so difficult to overtake while managing power unit temperatures and maybe doing lift-and-coast. I’m just impressed. One of the best races for a driver.

“This made me think of Valencia 2012, where we started 11th and won the race.”

You might assume this is just a team boss being effusive about their driver, and certainly this wouldn’t be the first time such feats had been exaggerated by someone at the helm of an F1 team. But Stella is sincere, and an analysis of Norris’s race shows just how good it was.

Even the bare numbers are impressive. Norris wasn’t assisted by any outrageous swings of good fortune. Even the red flag actually went against him in a race where he made 13 on-track passes for position.

Mexican Grand Prix driver rankings

Read more

Yes, the McLaren was potentially the second-best car on race day, with Stella suggesting it was vying with Lewis Hamilton’s Mercedes on pace, but given the unique demands of Mexico City to do a race like this that while managing the brake temperatures, tyre temperatures, power unit temperatures is remarkable. Just witness the struggles of George Russell by comparison, who felt he was “driving on ice” in the last 15 laps after being forced to back off for cooling reasons and losing tyre temperature he never regained.

The reason Norris’s superb drive only netted fifth is primarily that he braked too late into Turn 12 on what turned out to be his sole Q1 lap. As he put it, “it was quite silly of myself to push as much as that” on a lap where he could have cruised into the next phase of qualifying. It left him 17th on the grid and with a huge amount of work to do.

STINT 1 - ROLLING THE DICE

McLaren opted for an attacking strategy by putting Norris on softs for the start. That was a risky approach and he was the only driver to run the soft in the grand prix. As Stella said, “we wanted a strategy that gave us as much free air as possible”, meaning a short, sharp attacking opening stint.

Winners and losers from F1's 2023 Mexican Grand Prix

Read more

Norris didn’t actually make any ground at the start. Despite a good launch, he couldn’t find any space to make gains (and actually lost ground) - before establishing himself in 16th place by passing Esteban Ocon on the run out of Turn 3.

“It just helped me a bit at the start, off the line,” said Norris of the soft gamble when The Race asked him about the decision. “It’s always tough in Turn 1, can go your way, can not go your way but I think we played everything smart.”

With the first lap not really going his way and a net gain of just one place thanks to Sergio Perez’s elimination, Norris settled into the opening stint.

As early as the start of lap two he was warned by Joseph that “the car is hot” and told to pull to the right in the search of clean air to maximise cooling. There were multiple requests to do this during the first stint.

Norris chased Tsunoda during the first stint but found the AlphaTauri to be too quick through the last corner to get close enough to make a move even using the DRS. They were briefly separated by Alonso, who Tsunoda passed early on before Norris made a move on the damaged Aston Martin on the run to Turn 1 to take 15th.

That was the only on-track overtake he made during the opening stint, although he was menacing Tsunoda when the AlphaTauri driver struggled after an off trying to pass Kevin Magnussen at Turn 2 and pitted the following lap. That gave Norris a little free air with the luxury of running two more laps thanks to Tsunoda’s slow stop. He pitted at the end of lap 11 to take hards, emerging ahead of the AlphaTauri in 11th place.

STINT 2 - THE CHARGE AND THE MISCUE

At this point, Norris had a clear track and the team already had its sights on the lower points positions - with time checks initially to eighth-placed Nico Hulkenberg and later Mercedes driver George Russell, who was ahead of the Haas. But first, Norris had to catch then clear some traffic.

Ahead was a group of the two Aston Martins being chased by Ocon. Norris emerged from the pits just under 18 seconds behind that group, but caught Ocon at a rate of 1.75s per lap, and all the while ensuring he still had the grip to make passes once with the cars ahead.

Mark Hughes: The very different Mexican GP we could've had

Read more

He passed Ocon through the first complex on lap 22, which combined with Zhou Guanyu putting put him 16th. He then dispatched Alonso next time round, ending the lap 14th once Logan Sargeant had pitted. Stroll had pulled a small gap while this was going on, meaning that Norris had to spend a little time reeling him in again before making the pass into Turn 1 on lap 26. That meant 11th place given Tsunoda and Magnussen had pitted.

Such was Norris’s progress that he was giving Mercedes headaches.

George Russell was frustrated to be called in for his pitstop at the end of lap 26, but was told it was because of the undercut pressure Norris was exerting. Russell stayed ahead, and once he stopped he started to pull away again, but it shows that by this point of the race Norris was tracking for a good result. Having already overtaken Valtteri Bottas, he moved up to eighth when Williams driver Alex Albon stopped on lap 30.

Then came a key moment that could have helped Norris – Magnussen’s big accident.

By this point, Norris was well past the point at which his safety car pit window was in play so the logical decision was for him to come in. McLaren called him in at the last moment at the end of lap 33, with Norris committing in response - then immediately asking ‘why?’ and uttering an expletive.

Clearly, he realised having taken a good look as he drove past the scene that Magnussen’s crash could very likely mean a red flag.

The stop cost him two positions, to Tsunoda and Magnussen and meant he was 10th when the red flag flew. He greeted that with another expletive over the radio, realising that it would have been better to stay out and that perhaps he should have given his thoughts on the state of the crash scene.

However, the pitstop call was understandable. Had the safety car not been upgraded to a red flag, it would have been a cheap pitstop that allowed Norris to get onto the medium Pirellis he’d use to the finish.

“We came in with the safety car, which would put us in a very strong position with a brand new set of mediums for the final part of the race,” said Stella of the decision. “So we were like ‘wow, that's perfect’.

“When the safety car came out Lando was still at the start of the second sector and we discussed [it] but then he was close to it entry and the call needed to be made. At the time we had just seen the fire and if it's a safety car we would be in a very strong position.

“Then it was a red flag and we lost two positions."

STINT 3 - ONE FOR THE HISTORY BOOKS

Norris took the restart 10th, which was a promising place to be given his pace and the fact he was on the medium tyre that proved a good choice for the final stint. But what made life difficult was the restart.

His launch was adequate, albeit not as good as he would have hoped, but things started to go wrong when first Hulkenberg moved right across his nose, forcing a hesitation. That allowed Pierre Gasly to get alongside on his left and Albon on his right, with the pair squeezing Norris and forcing him to back out. He then lost another three positions into Turn 1, albeit repassing Zhou through the following complex to hold 14th place.

“I enjoyed the whole thing apart from my restart,” said Norris after the race. “I probably had to avoid quite a bit crash, just people coming across, probably not realising that people can be three abreast.

“I avoided two extremely big crashes, which would have been very nasty. A bit more self-awareness from some drivers would be great."

What followed was the most remarkable part of Norris’s race. He overtook Bottas, Ocon, Gasly, Hulkenberg and Albon before being let through by team-mate Oscar Piastri on lap 56.

Piastri was carrying damage after being hit by Tsunoda, but by his own admission was struggling with tyre management and was simply slower than Norris throughout the race.

Norris then made short work of chasing down and passing both Daniel Ricciardo and Russell to secure a remarkable fifth place. And across that final stint, with all the overtaking that required, he lost only three tenths of a second per lap on average to Hamilton, with most of those losses in the first half of the stint. That proved he could have been a factor in the podium fight.

WHY WAS HE SO QUICK?

The McLaren was a fast car on race day in Mexico and had Norris qualified near the front there’s every chance he could have finished on the podium, possibly as high as second. A fast car inevitably makes a strong race performance easier.

But what cannot be underestimated was the high-wire act Norris pulled off. Not only did he avoid any of the traps of this game of arch-management, always keeping the tyres alive, heeding instructions to lift-and-coast for cooling when required and making clean, efficient overtakes, he was also driving with great intelligence.

Red Bull's 'intention' for Perez leaves familiar wiggle room

Read more

Norris has plenty of stylistic tricks in his toolbox. The real art of managing F1 cars in extreme conditions is in maximising pace while doing so. Watching Norris’s onboards, he was very effective in ensuring his corner-entry speeds were correct, not overstressing the car mid-corner and demonstrating elegant kerb use.

The latter simply means, rather than monstering the kerbs, working with them and ensuring the car is at the right attitude to ride them without working the car too hard. At times, he was using noticeably more kerb than those around him, but in an elegant way.

Had Stella been working for Ferrari in 1990, he might have likened Norris’s driving to that produced by Alain Prost when he took his greatest victory in Mexico.

This exhibits how sharp a driver Norris is. Which means he certainly should have voiced an opinion about the likelihood of a red flag when the second pitstop was being considered - he instantly realised the potential implications of that stop so grasped the situation.

But beyond that, he drove a remarkably intelligent race, and one that didn’t require many instructions from the pitwall to pull off.

A DISAPPOINTMENT IN THE END

There is an element of what might have been to this weekend. Norris’s drive to fifth on Sunday was great, but his weekend was fundamentally undermined by the Q1 error. But Stella preferred to accentuate the positive.

“On one side, we are excited having seen this kind of masterpiece,” said Stella. “On the other side, like Lando said on the inlap ‘guys, let’s do a good job on Saturday and we can fight for podiums’.

“There is a little element of frustration. At the same time, if you asked me yesterday, I would [not] have thought we could have overtaken so many cars. So I'd rather take the positive out of this race and I hope that the entire team at the factory and all the fans receive the same sort of message - we are there, we don't give up, we are competitive but we need to do a better job overall over a race weekend.”

While Norris was delighted with the race itself, he couldn’t hide the wider disappointment.

“People complain [about] why I’m so disappointed at times,” said Norris shortly after the race. “It’s because of days like today. Of course I’m going to be disappointed, there’s a chance to finish on the podium and get another trophy, score more points.

“Why would I ever be happy about a day like yesterday? I know what we’re capable of doing and when you have a day like today, you think of the what could have been.

“[There’s] too many what-could-have-beens at the minute. I just need to tidy some things up and things can start to roll.”

There’s a quality that shows why Norris is unquestionably capable of being a serial race winner once in the position to do so. He sets high standards for himself and errs on the side of being too hard on himself. But that’s the mentality of a winner.

Add that to the speed, intelligence and artistry of his remarkable Mexican GP drive - and it shows why so many regard Norris as a potential superstar once in title-challenging machinery.

Current Gresini Ducati racer Fabio Di Giannanntonio has dropped the biggest hint yet that he will make a shock switch to Repsol Honda for the 2024 MotoGP season, completing what would be a straight swap between him and six-time world champion Marc Marquez for next year - a move that, as recently as a few months ago, would have been seen as totally unbelievable.

There has been constant speculation about the Italian rider’s future in the premier class since it was announced earlier this month that Marquez would be taking his seat for next season in a shock switch away from factory Honda colours after spending his entire 11-year MotoGP career with the Japanese brand.

Breaking his four-year contract a season early to instead join younger brother Alex at satellite squad Gresini Racing for next year, Marquez's move immediately left Di Giannantonio’s whole career future up in the right as the 25-year-old started to find some form in the series, scoring his maiden podium at Phillip Island 10 days ago.

And while he initially didn’t seem to be on Honda’s shopping list as it first mulled over the prospect of promoting newly-signed LCR Honda racer Johann Zarco and then went after other candidates like Maverick Vinales and Miguel Oliveira (despite them being locked into Aprilia contracts), it seems that things have slowly but steadily shifted in favour of the Italian as he’s shown that he’s now developed to the point necessary to give Honda what it needs.

Thai Grand Prix rider rankings

Read more

Di Giannantonio’s two seasons of premier-class experience, his knowledge of Michelin’s MotoGP tyres and his presumed willingness to commit on a shorter-term deal (to let Honda properly test the free agent market for 2024) have seemingly moved him to the top spot on the list of likely candidates, with a deal potentially even set to be announced ahead of the next race in Malaysia in two weeks’ time if his cryptic words after Sunday’s Thai race are to be believed.

Previously candid that nothing was yet close to being signed but honest in confirming that his personal manager had made an unexpected trip to the Buriram circuit to talk with Honda management, he was as recently as the Thursday ahead of the race continuing to deny that they were even close to putting pen to paper.

However, that changed after another decent top-10 finish in the Thai Grand Prix, that change suggesting that the 2024 MotoGP grid could finally be set in stone in the coming days.

“Let’s hope,” he said when asked if the result was another important step towards securing his future. “For sure we are working, and I hope also to give you some good news.

"I think there is coming something really nice.

“I’m not in a rush. I want to enjoy well this week, work well with my staff at home to prepare my future, and maybe I will give you something for Malaysia.”

Red Bull’s stated “intention” of keeping Sergio Perez in 2024 leaves some wiggle room that is familiar in the context of recent Formula 1 driver decisions.

There would be no "intention" of anything if Red Bull was completely set on what to do. It would just be the reality. And though it is clear that Perez has a contract for next year, and Red Bull’s plan is to keep him - plans can change.

Heck, Daniel Ricciardo became a Red Bull/AlphaTauri driver this year after reaching a mutual agreement to prematurely end his 2023 McLaren contract, which he and McLaren spent a lot of 2022 saying would be honoured. Now Ricciardo is being widely framed as a rival to Perez's seat for 2024 let alone 2025.

Contracts can be honoured in different ways - Red Bull has shown that plenty of times itself. Either it moves a driver between its teams or the driver gets axed and presumably just paid off. Perez is just the latest to have a contract that is a clear indication of what should happen but is not actually a guarantee that it will.

The key difference to McLaren that makes Ricciardo revival real

Read more

When Red Bull Racing team boss Christian Horner speaks, he is presumably doing so from a position of authority, and his language is specific and intentional.

Horner has been explicit that Perez would not be dropped for, specifically, failing to finish second in the championship. He has been a fraction less convincing regarding Perez’s future being 100% set in stone.

After Perez crashed at the first corner of the Mexican Grand Prix, Horner was asked – for the second weekend in a row – if he will lose his drive if he doesn't beat Lewis Hamilton to finish second in the championship.

Horner replied: “It’s not as binary as that. You’ve got to look at the circumstances and so on and we’ve made a- Checo has an agreement with us for next year and that’s our intention, for him to be in the car in 2024.

“We’ll give him all the support we can to ensure that he finishes second but there’s no prerequisite that if he doesn’t finish second, you’re out.”

It is all quite clear. But the key language is that it is Red Bull’s intention for him to be in the car. A week previous in Austin Horner did intimate Perez’s place was certain but again the specific phrasing opens the door for interpretation. Is he 100% sure of being at the next year: “Yeah, he’s got our full commitment and full support. We desperately want Checo to succeed.”

Was that a ‘yes, he can be 100% sure of his place’? Or is the ‘Yeah’ at the start undermined by the following sentiment that Red Bull is backing him and wants it to work. Because it’s definitely in Red Bull’s interest for it to work as it’s the path of least resistance. But that doesn’t mean it will, and if it doesn’t, then Red Bull will be inclined to take action.

Albon on reality of driving an F1 car built around Verstappen

Read more

And there is a lesson here from Perez’s predecessors. Weeks before dropping Pierre Gasly, Red Bull said it had no intention of dropping Gasly. When Albon was replaced by Perez at the end of 2020, it was preceded by Red Bull stressing how much it wanted things to work.

There is a trend here – Red Bull stands by its drivers until it doesn’t. It doesn’t make anything that gets said in support of Perez a lie, but it is a little naive to just take it entirely at face value and not to read between the lines.

To be clear, none of this is to say Red Bull should take action, or that Perez deserves to be dropped. While there have been extended spells of form unworthy of a Red Bull, the task of being Verstappen’s team-mate is unenviable, it’s not easy to tame a car that is developed to Verstappen’s extremely high level of ability, and Perez has still had bigger peaks than anybody since Ricciardo did.

Plus, had Perez merely played the percentages at the start of the Mexican GP instead of risking everything to win the race at the first corner, he would almost certainly have had a strong run to the podium. He would probably have finished second.

This after being barely a tenth slower than Verstappen in qualifying. It is unfair on Perez to just ignore that – the first corner clash completely changes the focus of his weekend but it cannot eradicate all the details, which include a very obvious silver lining.

It’s worth pointing out that Perez gave Red Bull every chance to stick the boot in and the team opted not to. Now, that might have been some sensible discretion on its part – best not stir up a hornets’ nest while still at Checo’s home race! – but it did seem quite sincere.

This was the worst possible time for Perez to implode again

Read more

“You can’t blame him, at his home race, trying to take the lead of the grand prix,” Horner said.

“It’s a tough moment for him. It’s in front of his home crowd and he was very emotional.

“I just said to him, ‘the next race is next week. You’re going for the lead in your home race, you wouldn’t be a racing driver if you weren’t going for it’.”

Despite some believing that Red Bull does not care whether Perez succeeds or fails, it does. He has had, and retains, the team’s support. Red Bull really wants him to finish second in the drivers’ championship because that one-two has always eluded it.

How much Red Bull has hammered home the value it ascribes that result might be considered unnecessary or helpful pressure. But it does just reflect the reality and, again, Perez has the team’s backing.

“He’s got three races to convert that second place,” said Horner. “There are 20 points between him and Lewis.

“He’s had some misfortune, he’s had some issues but we still believe he can do it between now and the end of the year.”

Mark Hughes: The very different Mexican GP we could've had

Read more

You can give Red Bull the benefit of the doubt when Horner says that finishing second is not a condition of his 2024 drive. But if Perez fails to do so, it would clearly be an argument against keeping him. Especially on top of the other struggles.

That’s why we’re in this position to begin with, where a drive that’s ostensibly secure for 2024 doesn’t feel so safe.

Perhaps the best way to frame the situation is this: Red Bull has signalled its intent but remains a little non-committal.

Perez’s place is not guaranteed, even beyond the cliché that nothing is guaranteed in F1, because Red Bull’s demands and its history mean that its "intention" is just that – a target, a plan, but not a total assurance.

MotoGP title contender Jorge Martin clearly feels his Thailand Grand Prix victory was something of a statement win - a triumph pulled off in rival Pecco Bagnaia's "comfort zone".

And Martin certainly has a point, but a post-race revelation about the parameters his race was run in is something that should be at the back of his mind, too.

Four key title fight moments in MotoGP's 2023 best race yet

Read more

Martin was clearly not overflowing with confidence coming into Sunday's 26-lap race, despite having topped all the main sessions of the weekend prior - both Friday practices, Q2 and the sprint.

That was probably because the situation had been pretty similar at Mandalika and Phillip Island, two tracks where Martin had looked even more in control, and yet in both cases the big 25-point haul slipped through his fingers.

"It was a real relief, to finish today in the top," he admitted after the grand prix.

"Yesterday, I wasn't even happy, I didn't enjoy the moment, [winning the sprint] I was just focused on today. Without sleeping for four days, and finally today I will sleep well.

"The last two races were tough for me, I think more Mandalika than Australia, because Australia in the end was tyre choice, we did a mistake, but the mistake I did in Indonesia was huge. I had a three-second gap and I crashed, it was really painful.

'Shouldn't happen in 2023' - MotoGP's latest concussion concerns

Read more

"Today the pressure was high, to win was important for me, mentally I think it gave me a really big motivation for the next races."

But it was about the style of the win, too, not just the fact of the win itself - a win that brought him to within 13 points of Bagnaia.

Martin had led nearly 100 laps on Sundays already this year coming into the Thailand Grand Prix, yet the way he was pacing himself in the opening laps felt relatively unfamiliar, especially compared to the recent weekends.

After 10 laps in Indonesia, he was 2.5 seconds clear of Maverick Vinales. After 10 laps in Australia, 2.2 seconds clear of Brad Binder. This time, Binder was just two tenths behind as the 'laps completed' counter ticked over into double digits.

The compressed pack behind him told a story, and Martin leaving so much in reserve in the early going probably indirectly helped Bagnaia fight through more easily after dropping back to seventh early on.

But the vibe from Martin after the sprint already was that he knew this was how it was going to have to be, because he did not seem convinced about being able to outlast Binder and Bagnaia over a grand prix distance without being clever about it.

'Felt like I was dying' - Aprilia's heat problem at critical point

Read more

"Today I changed my strategy. Instead of pushing like crazy the first 10 laps, I tried to just keep that two tenths, one tenth, to the second one, to save tyre," he told MotoGP.com's After the Flag.

Still, though, even as he arrived into the race's closing stages with tyres seemingly in decent shape, he was wondering whether his rivals had outfoxed him anyway, and whether settling for second or even third was on the cards.

"Normally, when there was a big battle, [in the past] I was struggling a bit to overtake or to brake hard, but today I had that confidence I could use to gain back positions, to fight back with Brad. And I didn't expect.

"When they caught me in the last part of the race, I think they were a bit faster than me. Even if I managed a lot the tyre, they were a bit stronger. But I was able to fight back all the times.

"I think both Brad and Pecco are the strongest in braking. To be able to beat them in battle, I think it's an unbelievable feeling. For sure it gives me a lot of confidence, but also at the same time shows me that I can be one of the strongest in braking."

Again, Martin's style of winning is usually more associated with your classic Jorge Lorenzo race - start on pole, 'see you later', pace-manage once the gap is already there. The desire for a race like that, rather than the risk of being roughed up in the pack, is what led him down the wrong tyre choice alley at Phillip Island.

But here he couldn't help but accept that possibility - but, in having the confidence that he had the bike under him to defend well and strike back when he needed, he effectively emulated an archetypical Bagnaia win instead.

Bagnaia, of course, isn't MotoGP's first 'tactician', so maybe shouldn't be the first example here. Except he's the example that came to Martin's mind.

"I think when Pecco caught us, he was thinking to win because in the battle he's super strong. We know from the other races that when there's a battle he normally wins, no? So to beat him in his comfort zone I think was super important."

So, that's the symbolic value of the victory - and the extra five points taken out of Bagnaia shouldn't be ignored, too.

At the same time, there are two caveats that Martin would be wise to keep in mind.

The first one, the smaller one, is that this was still very much a winnable race for Bagnaia, and that it would've been doubly so had the reigning champion consolidated the fourth place he'd gained at the start.

If he continued in fourth for several laps, instead of being roughed up by Binder and consigned to fighting out some extra battles further back as a result, he would've been an even sterner late-race challenge. Of course, the fact he was in a position to be roughed up by Binder to begin with is reflective of Bagnaia's relatively troubled recent single-lap form - but you'd still back him to make early-race gains more often than not.

The other caveat is a bigger one - Martin received a post-race warning for breaching the tyre pressure parameters, meaning he ran more than 50% of the race laps with the front tyre pressure below the minimum.

It's easy to see how that happened - he spent more of the race in clean air than basically anyone else, so didn't get the 'benefit' of the heat from the bike up ahead spiking the tyre pressure. But Martin and his crew will have expected this kind of race, running in clean air, which suggests they got some of the calculations wrong.

Thai Grand Prix 2023 MotoGP rider rankings

Read more

It puts an asterisk on his win. Not in the sense that it is a somehow less valid win - the current MotoGP tyre pressure rule is a particularly tricky one, with compliance clearly wildly dependent on the circumstances of your race, meaning it's nowhere near as simple as declaring that Martin went into battle with an illegal machine or anything. And in any case his compliance in the previous races meant he could afford this 'joker' of a warning.

But if the runs the same type of race again in the future and again can't keep the tyre pressure in the right window, that'll now be a three-second penalty. In a title fight as close as this, it almost doesn't bear mentioning that this could be potentially ruinous.

So, a big win, an impressive win - but given Bagnaia's Sunday prowess and the points Martin had spotted him in Indonesia and Australia, Martin still finds himself walking a title fight tightrope - even if he's proven his arsenal is more robust than some may have believed.

When MotoGP left Phillip Island behind last weekend, it was after a race that everyone thought would take quite a long time to be surpassed - never expecting that the Thai Grand Prix at Buriram only a few days later would deliver an even more intense battle as championship rivals Jorge Martin and Pecco Bagnaia went head to head for the win with a title very much on the line.

This week, it was Pramac rider Martin who came out on top, closing down the title race once again as the series prepares to head into the final triple-header block with everything still to play for - but with Bagnaia having limited the damage to ensure a slim 13-point lead remains.

There was more than just them in the race, of course, though, with KTM rider Brad Binder notable for being able to get stuck into the battle for the win alongside the two title contenders, while further back there were a number of surprise performances both good and bad, meaning that as always there’s plenty to talk about in this weekend’s rider ratings.

Scoring the grid in order based on their performances not just in the races but also taking things like qualifying and starting position into account, it’s obviously all subjective - but comes not just from their final results but takes into account things like the machinery they’re on and the pre-race expectations.

1 Jorge Martin

Started: 1st Sprint: 1st Race: 1st

It’s absolutely fair to call this weekend perhaps the best of Jorge Martin’s career, not just for the way in which he dominated but because of the manner he dealt with the pressure that’s now being piled on his shoulders.

Able to do what he does best in the sprint and clear off into the distance, it was far more impressive that he was able to shake up his tactics in the main event and try something new for him - controlling the pace until he needed to pull the pin and go faster than everyone else.

The best GP win of his five in the premier class by a long way.

2 Marc Marquez

Started: 8th Sprint: 4th Race: 6th

Marc Marquez has, simply put, no business at all sticking the Honda where he did this weekend.

Showing shades of his old 2019 self (when he was able to dominate on the RC213V while no one else could get close), the bike might not be good enough to win titles on any more but there’s no doubt that he’s still head and shoulders above the rest of Honda’s riders when it comes to extracting performance from the machine.

It might only be fourth in the sprint and sixth in the race, but the way he rode at the weekend (three rounds before a Ducati switch) should worry his opponents.

3 Pecco Bagnaia

Started: 6th Sprint: 7th Race: 2nd

Another weekend where Pecco Bagnaia continues to hinder himself before the racing even gets underway by failing to deliver the sort of qualifying performances we came to expect from him at the start of the year.

It’s more than obvious where he’s losing out to title rival Martin now, by giving himself far too much work to do in the early part of the races, and it’s doubly punishing for him in sprints.

He maintains a championship lead thanks to his superb racecraft, but there’s a risk now that it won’t be enough.

4 Marco Bezzecchi

Started: 4th Sprint: 6th Race: 4th

Given that he’s still riding with a shoulder only just recovered from surgery to plate a broken collarbone, this weekend’s performances were, once again, an excellent job from VR46 rider Marco Bezzecchi.

Doing his absolute utmost to keep whatever faint championship hopes he has alive by riding through the pain barrier and despite his physical limitations, it’s not the results he will have wanted - but nonetheless another top weekend considering everything.

5 Brad Binder

Started: 5th Sprint: 2nd Race: 3rd

On a weekend where Ducati was looked to dominate proceedings, fair play to Brad Binder for getting stuck in at the front and trying his utmost to upset the pecking order.

However, while the sprint might have been excellent, you can’t help but feel that the KTM rider once again let himself down a little by failing to stay on the track on the final lap of Sunday’s race, his third time this season losing a position after the chequered flag had come out.

6 Fabio Quartararo

Started: 10th Sprint: 11th Race: 5th

This weekend was one where Fabio Quartararo knew he’d have a chance to be closer to his rivals, and while Saturday’s sprint might have been less than perfect, you have to give it to the 2021 world champion for knowing when to make the most of his opportunities again on Sunday.

Though he was never going to have enough to be involved in the title rivals' fight at the front, settling for next best wasn’t an awful end to his weekend on a Yamaha that’s still clearly not as good as its rider.

7 Luca Marini

Started: 2nd Sprint: 3rd Race: 7th

In terms of qualifying pace, it’s fair to say that Luca Marini is now absolutely there. A consistent front row threat and able to convert that well into sprint race performances, he delivered the same again on Saturday.

There’s still very much something to make up in the main events, but while his seventh might not have reflected his early-race pace, he’s slowly getting closer to being a regular podium threat.

8 Fabio Di Giannantonio

Started: 13th Sprint: DNF Race: 9th

Not quite the weekend that he had at Phillip Island or Mandalika, yet this was still another decent example that the new and improved Fabio Di Giannantonio is here to stay.

Missing out by not making it to Q2, from that point on his Sunday performance was always going to be limited (especially after his sprint race was brought to a premature end by technical problems).

But he rallied back well on Sunday - and the momentum of recent races continues for the Italian, who has put himself at the top of Repsol Honda’s 2024 shopping list.

9 Aleix Espargaro

Started: 3rd Sprint: 5th Race: 8th

On one hand, it wasn’t a terrible weekend at all for Aprilia rider Aleix Espargaro, with a decent qualifying performance and a not-bad fifth-place finish at the flag in both races - at least, until a tyre pressure violation on Sunday demoted him three places.

Admitting afterwards that the race showed the limit of the package particularly also in dealing with the same temperature issues as everyone else on an Aprilia, even with the sanction he should leave Thailand relatively content with the performance.

10 Franco Morbidelli

Started: 18th Sprint: 15th Race: 11th

Yamaha expected things to be a little bit easier than they were in Thailand, but while Franco Morbidelli might not have left with the results he wanted, he at least had more speed than he’s had in a while.

Very much counting down the days until he ditches the M1 for a Ducati, he nonetheless wants to go out on a high, and it’s a shame that bad qualifying performances and a relative inability to overtake continue to hamstring him.

11 Alex Marquez

Started: 7th Sprint: 8th Race: DNF

There was a lot on offer for Alex Marquez on Sunday, given the way in which he converted a strong start into podium contention early on in the race.

Opting to gamble on a softer rear tyre than those around him, it was paying off until it didn’t, with the Gresini rider making yet another mistake and ending up in the gravel.

But, even if he didn’t see the flag, he proved that there’s still speed there.

12 Joan Mir

Started: 19th Sprint: 12th Race: 12th

Occasionally, Joan Mir is able to demonstrate little glimmers here and there that suggest that Honda is very slowly finding a better path out of the hole it currently finds itself in, and Buriram was in that sort of vein.

Undoubtedly aided by the arrival of Michelin’s harder carcass rear tyre, he was able to utilise it to stay on the bike and leave the Thai weekend a little more confident than he'd arrived.

13 Johann Zarco

Started: 11th Sprint: 9th Race: 10th

Normally, when Johann Zarco has relatively invisible MotoGP weekends, you can still rely on him to ghost his way into a relatively strong result at the end, but that wasn’t the case in Thailand, with the Frenchman instead very much left to settle for scraps at the back of the Ducati pack.

Not fantastic at a track where he should have been stronger and, as others demonstrated, the bike was working well.

14 Augusto Fernandez

Started: 12th Sprint: DNF Race: 17th

Far from the best weekend for Augusto Fernandez, it’s maybe a mark of the high standards that we’ve come to expect from the Tech3 Gas Gas rookie that he’s getting voted down for a weekend where he still ended up progressing directly to Q2 and clear of team-mate Pol Espargaro.

There’s still work that needs to be done both by rider and team, but the whole project is moving along nicely enough for him as he closes in on the end of year one in the premier class.

15 Raul Fernandez

Started: 14th Sprint: 14th Race: 15th

There was actually plenty to be pleased about in Buriram for satellite Aprilia rider Raul Fernandez, even if it didn’t all come together for him in the races.

Not able to match his single-lap pace from recent rounds, he was hampered by a poor grid position - but an excellent start on Sunday in particular meant that he looked to be in a great place to fight for his best result yet, until the same heat issues that affected all of the RS-GP racers meant he could do nothing but concede time in order to literally catch a breath.

An unfair end to what could have been a successful weekend for him.

16 Taka Nakagami

Started: 16th Sprint: 19th Race: 14th

Another weekend where Nakagami just quietly goes about his business on the LCR Honda without doing anything too exciting - but at least the harder Michelin rear tyre designed for Buriram’s high heat meant that he was able to be a little closer to the front.

Making a rare error in the sprint, it wasn’t like he threw away any championship points - and decent consistency in the main event at least saw him roll home with two more on his 2023 scoresheet.

17 Pol Espargaro

Started: 17th Sprint: 16th Race: 18th

Another weekend where the still-recovering Pol Espargaro's physical limitations were on display.

The reality is the Spaniard is still not fully recovered from his round one crash, and while other factors might have played into a rather disappointing weekend for him, it remains a constant in these intense high-temperature races even as he draws closer to what’s likely to be the end of his tenure as a full-time MotoGP racer in a few weeks’ time.

18 Maverick Vinales

Started: 9th Sprint: 18th Race: DNF

A tough weekend for Maverick Vinales, thanks in large part to his machinery more than his riding - even if the pace that the early part of the weekend hinted at simply wasn’t there come Saturday.

Not as competitive as expected in qualifying, his sprint race was ruined by a ride height device failure - but come Sunday, he again just wasn’t as fast as he had promised to be, up until the point where Aprilia’s heat dissipation issues became too much for him and he parked it in the pits.

19 Miguel Oliveira

Started: 20th Sprint: 17th Race: DNF

It’s hard to understand what went so badly wrong for Miguel Olivera all weekend at Buriram.

Never once featuring towards the front of any session before a still-undiagnosed technical issue ruled him out of the race, it’s a far cry from his early-season results and one that’s got to be troubling both him and his CryptoData RNF Aprilia team as they try to get to the bottom of how they’ve fallen.

20 Jack Miller

Started: 15th Sprint: 10th Race: 16th

When Miller was signed from Ducati as KTM’s big-name star to join Binder for 2023, it’s hard to imagine that the Austrian factory thought that it'd be seeing him struggling so badly at points this season.

While he has speed on occasion, his consistency remains an elusive thing. Miller's performances at Buriram very much underlined that, especially given the stark contrast between him and team-mate Binder, who spent all of Sunday afternoon fighting for the win.

21 Enea Bastianini

Started: 21st Sprint: 13th Race: 13th

The Enea Bastianini that we’ve been seeing in 2023 is nothing but a shadow of last year’s title-contending racer.

No longer struggling physically after his succession of injuries earlier in the year but admitting that he’s simply not finding the riding style that he needs to make the Desmosedici work properly, it’s fair to say Ducati didn’t promote him from Gresini to factory colours to qualify in last place…

A lucky man, considering Martin’s form, to already have a factory place secured for 2024.

A Mexican Grand Prix Formula 1 weekend that had promised above-average intrigue ultimately ended with a familiar outcome, and a record-breaking one at that.

But though Max Verstappen was at his reliably high level en route to victory, he was just one of a handful of drivers with a legitimate case for being named the most impressive performer at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

How do the rankings work? The 20 drivers will be ranked in order of performance from best to worst on each grand prix weekend. This will be based on the full range of criteria, ranging from pace and racecraft to consistency and whether they made key mistakes. How close each driver got to delivering on the maximum performance potential of the car will be an essential consideration.

It’s important to note both that this reflects performance across the entire weekend, cognisant of the fact that qualifying is effectively ‘lap 0’ of the race and key to laying the foundations to the race, and that it is not a ranking of the all-round qualities of each driver. It’s simply about how they performed on a given weekend. Therefore, the ranking will fluctuate significantly from weekend to weekend.

And with each of the 10 cars fundamentally having different performance potential and ‘luck’ (ie factors outside of a driver’s control) contributing to the way the weekend plays out, this ranking will also differ significantly from the overall results.

Started: 1st Finished: 3rd

Charles Leclerc was one of the few drivers who strung together their best three sectors when it counted in Q3, although even then he gave away a little time at the end of the lap. But he was strong throughout qualifying and a deserving polesitter.

The combination of losing the lead at the start and the red flag denied him the chance to try to defeat Verstappen with one fewer pitstop, with the timing of the stoppage also meaning he lost out to Lewis Hamilton when he should have been at least second.

Verdict: Red flag timing compromised his race.

Started: 3rd Finished: 1st

Mark Hughes: The very different Mexican GP we could've had

Read more

Verstappen probably could have taken pole position, but it didn’t make much difference given he took the lead on the first lap anyway.

Thereafter, he drove a strong race, albeit with the complexity of the two-stopper he was on simplified by the assistance of the red flag.

He’d probably have won regardless, but it made his life far easier.

Verdict: Red flag denied the chance to win even more stylishly.

Started: 6th Finished: 2nd

Hamilton’s rich vein of form continued as he had a clear edge over Mercedes team-mate George Russell and produced a strong race drive that, with a little help from the red flag that allowed him to beat Leclerc, yielded second place.

While he wasn’t quite as comfortable with the car as he had been throughout the Austin weekend, he extracted good pace from it and delivered a consistently strong race drive, with the insistent grass-biting overtake on Leclerc the highlight.

Verdict: Strong, but left a little on the table in qualifying.

Started: 4th Finished: 7th

The key difference to McLaren that makes Ricciardo's revival real

Read more

This was something approaching the Daniel Ricciardo F1 looked to have lost, with the improved front end of the AlphaTauri allowing him to get the most out of a car that worked very well in Mexico.

While by his own admission he left a little time on the table in qualifying thanks to not improving on his second Q3 lap, that’s the only thing he gave away in what was a convincing weekend.

Verdict: Ricciardo’s best weekend since Monza ‘21.

Started: 2nd Finished: 4th

Sainz was very slightly off Ferrari team-mate Leclerc’s level, but not by much.

The first part of the race proved difficult thanks to a poor launch and what he described as a “weird stint on mediums” with graining kicking in “almost on the formation lap”. That led to him dropping 10 seconds behind Leclerc.

But after switching to the hard tyres, he was back to being very close to his team-mate’s pace.

Verdict: Second-best Ferrari, but only by a small margin.

Started: 17th Finished: 5th

Were this ranking based purely on the race rather than the whole weekend, Lando Norris might well be top.

However, what he called his “silly mistake” on the one Q1 lap he had the chance to do fundamentally changed his weekend for the worse and meant a qualifying and race result below what was possible.

His brilliantly incisive race drive partly made up for the losses, but overall a bigger result was left on the table. However, as the mistake was on a single qualifying lap - with a fuel system "uncertainty" forcing McLaren to write off his first run, and a yellow flag costing him a second flier - that’s not as big a ranking hit as it could've been.

Verdict: Qualifying dents his ranking.

Started: 11th Finished: 11th

Pierre Gasly finished behind his team-mate Esteban Ocon, but did have the edge in the Alpine camp on pace during the weekend.

With Alpine struggling for speed, 11th on the grid was a decent effort - but the timing of the red flag allowed medium-shod Alex Albon and Ocon to jump Gasly given he started on hards he’d fitted before the stoppage.

That cost him a minor points finish.

Verdict: Deserved a few points in a struggling Alpine.

Started: 12th Finished: 13th

Nico Hulkenberg characterised the Haas as a car that “didn’t have balance, rhythm and grip” after qualifying - and was surprised to be as high as 12th.

He translated that into a race in which he came within six laps of scoring an unlikely point before inevitably falling behind the Alpines and Yuki Tsunoda.

His cause wasn’t helped by the red flag that left him with too long a final stint on mediums in a Haas that is still hard on his tyres.

Verdict: Overachieved in a car that was fundamentally limited.

Started: 15th Finished: 10th

Ocon was happy with the feel of the Alpine, albeit not the pace, on Friday but struggled more on Saturday and was frustrated by a compromised outlap on his second Q1 run that contributed to his elimination.

He opted to start on hards, losing three places on the first lap, but was helped out by the red flag that gave him a free tyre stop.

Getting ahead of Gasly through the first complex at the restart was key as he went on to pass Hulkenberg for the final point.

Verdict: By a small margin seemed second-best of the Alpines.

Started: 14th Finished: 9th

Albon showed eye-catching pace during practice but couldn’t make it count in qualifying.

While the high track temperatures at the start of qualifying made the car slower, he still should have made Q3 - and would have done but for having his Q2 time deleted for what he felt was a dubious track limits violation at Turn 2.

He credited two very good starts for his rise to ninth after what he described as a “weird” race.

Verdict: Ultimately disappointing but still salvaged points.

Started: 8th Finished: 6th

The pace came and went in qualifying as Russell struggled in Q3, ending up just over two tenths of a second off Mercedes team-mate Hamilton.

In what he described as a “race dictated by tyres” he was threatening Sainz in the second stint before having to back off because of overheating brakes, losing tyre temperature and “driving on ice for the last 15 laps”. He felt he was lucky only to slip to sixth.

Verdict: A frustrating step behind Hamilton all weekend.

Started: 7th Finished: 8th

Some rookie rough edges showed this weekend, Oscar Piastri underachieving in Q3 then having markedly worse tyre use than McLaren team-mate Norris in the race.

However, that was compounded by the damage he picked up when Tsunoda turned in on him while battling for seventh. But he kept his head and brought home points.

Verdict: Fell short of the potential of the car.

Started: 13th Finished: DNF

When you see Fernando Alonso spinning, you know something’s wrong. When you see him spinning twice, something is badly wrong. And when he admits “I always felt on the back foot and was not trusting the car” you know that there’s no hope.

There were signs of the belligerence behind the wheel that can set in when he’s frustrated, but given the car pace and damage from debris sustained at Turn 1, who could blame him.

Verdict: Weak car seemed to rub off on Alonso’s performance.

Started: 16th Finished: DNF

Considering Kevin Magnussen sat out FP1 for Ollie Bearman, then lost much of FP3 to a left-rear wheel problem, lapping a couple of tenths off Hulkenberg in Q1 was very respectable.

He carries no blame for the heavy Turn 8 crash that brought out the red flag given it was caused by a suspension failure, which brought to an end a race that had been reasonable up to that point.

Verdict: A solid effort with circumstances against him.

Started: Pits Finished: 17th

Lance Stroll struggled with what he described as “no grip” in qualifying, but despite being eliminated in Q1 the 0.379s deficit to Aston Martin team-mate Alonso was adequate by recent standards.

But he started from the pits with a car that was largely reverted to the pre-upgrade specification, passing the hobbled Alonso early on.

He held 14th when he overtook Valtteri Bottas at the hairpin only to clash with the Alfa Romeo heading at the exit, putting him out.

Verdict: Fared OK compared to Alonso in a poor Aston Martin.

Started: 10th Finished: 14th

Zhou Guanyu showed good pace but was kicking himself for his Q2 elimination, only to be reprieved when Albon had his laptime disallowed.

He wasn’t quite at the level of Alfa Romeo team-mate Bottas pace-wise, but ended up closer than he was trending to be thanks to his team-mate’s Turn 13 error.

On Sunday, Zhou held 10th early on before being passed by Albon, but having to restart on hards that had 13 laps on them (the most mileage on the compound of anyone at the restart) meant he had no chance in the second half of the race.

Verdict: Did a solid job but was undone by the red flag.

Started: 5th Finished: DNF

Perez's Mexican GP implosion couldn't be timed worse

Read more

Amid the drama of being outqualified by Red Bull stablemate Ricciardo, it was important not to miss the fact Perez was only 0.160s slower than Verstappen in qualifying. That suggested he is making some progress with the car.

But the feat was undone after a fast start got him alongside Leclerc and Verstappen heading into Turn 1 - where ambition overpowered good racecraft and he turned in on a Ferrari that had nowhere to go and ended Perez’s race.

Verdict: Turn 1 rashness harpooned his best weekend in months.

Started: 9th Finished: 15th

This was a weekend that promised much and Bottas was able to extract good pace from the Alfa Romeo. A lock-up in the Turn 13 hairpin cost him significant time in Q3, three tenths against his best, which might possibly have cost him a position or two.

He slipped to 12th at the start, not helped by losing gear sync, then pitted just before the red flag, which left him well down the order and stuck in a traffic jam for the rest of the race.

Verdict: Underlying pace promised a little more.

Started: 18th Finished: 12th

Things were going so well for Tsunoda until he bafflingly turned across Piastri while making what looked like an inevitable pass.

He sat out FP1, knew he had a back-of-the-grid penalty and played his role perfectly in qualifying by towing AlphaTauri team-mate Ricciardo in Q1 and Q2, then showed good pace in climbing the order.

The pace was there and he really should have finished eighth.

Verdict: One big misjudgement destroyed an impressive weekend.

Started: 19th Finished: 16th

Sargeant headed into the weekend eager to build on a strong Austin race performance - but failed to do so.

He described qualifying as “a bit of a waste of a session” thanks to “stopping in pitlane, losing tyre temp, chaos outlap, impeding on lap, yellow flags”. That, combined with two track limits violations, left him without a time and last in Q1. On top of that, he was also penalised for passing under yellows and not slowing enough on his final lap.

The race was more encouraging, although wheelspin at the restart dropped him to the back.

He had to retire on the last lap to avoid engine damage when a fuel pump problem Williams had been managing led to the team being “unable to scavenge the fuel from the tank to the fuel rail”.

Verdict: Promising signs in the race but only after two iffy days.