Verstappen rues lack of pace after his incident-filled Mexico City F1 race

After an incident-filled race at the Mexico City Grand Prix, championship leader Max Verstappen insists that the main issue was that his RB20 lacked race pace in the 71-lap race which left him vulnerable to his direct rivals.

Reigning champion Max Verstappen displayed strong performance in qualifying to secure P2 on the grid for the Mexico City Grand Prix. The Dutchman then had a great start to overtake Carlos Sainz into the first corner.

However, the Spaniard used the impressive top speed of his SF-24 to pick off Verstappen into Turn 1 to retake the lead. After losing out to the Ferrari man, he was handed two separate time penalties on the same lap fighting with his championship rival Lando Norris.

It meant he was stationary for a total of 20 seconds during his sole pit stop, which dropped him down the order. Although he recovered to sixth but Norris cut the gap in the drivers’ standing by 10 points.

“It was a tough weekend,” Verstappen started. “The start was good but after that we had no pace, we struggled on both compounds for the rest of the race. Because of the penalties we had a long pitstop, and it was a recovery drive to score as many points as possible after that.

“It is what it is. We need to understand what went wrong this weekend but there was not much else we could have done today. There’s a lot of things that we want to do better, and we will need to work hard to come back stronger in Brazil.”

Sergio Perez had a great start, climbing up the order. However, the Mexican received a five-second penalty for failing to take his grid box correctly.

Despite the penalty, he was on course to fight for points, but a wheel-to-wheel fight with Liam Lawson saw Perez pick up significant damage to the floor and sidepod of his RB20.

“It was a very difficult one today, we were recovering well in the race, we had a really good start and although we unfortunately got the time penalty, I think we were making progress and were going to score good points.

“Then I had the incident with Liam, he was the first hard tyre and we were a lot faster, we targeted the inside, we had the corner and I wasn’t expecting him to be there, I had the position going into turn five, he was off the track, came back on and I wasn’t expecting him to carry on straight.

“He took the whole side of the car off, he damaged my whole sidepod and my floor. I don’t really get it, it was totally avoidable, he just went for the incident and it ruined both our races. I am very frustrated at how this weekend went, and I am very sorry for my Team and my people, it was simply the worse GP I have had at home.”

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner has acknowledged that the Milton Keynes-based outfit once again lacked race pace at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez which caught the outfit by surprise after its strong showing in qualifying.

“Not the race we had hoped for. Penalties and damage really impacted our race. Pace was an issue for us today and that is something that we will really need to look at and understand where we lost out in the race.

“We had good pace yesterday, but we were lacking today so there will need to be a lot of hard work between now and Brazil. Checo’s race really suffered which is a huge shame in his home race.

“He picked up some significant damage early on and that coupled with the penalty really meant his race was shot from then on”, concluded Horner.