Strategy debrief: one-stop strategy dominated the Mexico City Grand Prix

As expected, most of the drivers elected to pit only once at last Sunday’s Mexico City Grand Prix, with only three drivers having opted for a second stop in hope of setting the quickest race lap.

1200 kilometres separate Austin from Mexico City, but on the racetrack not that much seems to have changed since last week. A Ferrari won in Texas and a Ferrari won in the Mexican capital.

Carlos Sainz displayed impressive pace to secure pole position for the Mexico City Grand Prix, but he was picked off down to Turn 1, losing the first spot to reigning champion Max Verstappen.

After a safety car period brought out by RB driver Yuki Tsunoda, the Spaniard fought back against Verstappen to reclaim the lead. From there, he led all the way to the flag for his fourth career win and first in Mexico.

For the Spaniard, this was career win number four, the second this season after Melbourne. It is the 248th win for Ferrari, the second in a row and the fifth this year, and the most wins it has scored in a season since 2018. It is also the Scuderia’s third win on the track named after the Rodriguez brothers, following on from victories for Jacky Ickx in 1970 and Alain Prost in 1990.

“A race that provided plenty of excitement right from the start, before gradually settling down, at least as far as the leaders were concerned, before livening up again towards the finish with duels between Leclerc and Norris and an even longer one between Hamilton and Russell

“There was plenty of action behind the top five, and at the very end, several drivers pitted for fresh tyres to go for the fastest race lap.

One-stop strategy

As for the strategy, Pirelli had predicted that the majority of the field would elect to orientate their strategies around a one-stop approach. This prediction has proved right as tyre degradation proved quite low.

14 drivers opted to start on the medium tyre, while six – Sergio Perez, Esteban Ocon, Franco Colapinto, Liam Lawson, Valtteri Bottas and Zhou Guanyu – went with the hard for their opening stint.

The Safety Car was required right from the opening lap following the collision between Yuki Tsunoda and Alex Albon, which led to both of them retiring. No one used the interruption to pit for a new set of tyres as everyone had planned to go long during their first stint.

In the first few laps after the restart, the race was action-packed with drivers passing and repassing, giving the Stewards plenty of work to do.

Perez and Lawson were involved in a fierce on-track, side-by-side battle. After starting from far back on the grid, Perez had a successful opening stage, and closed in on RB driver Liam Lawson by Lap 13. The two drivers crashed on Lap 18 as they were fighting for P10. The New-Zealander ran wide at Turn 4, and the battle ended in considerable contact at Turn 5, leaving Perez with major sidepod and floor damage.

The incident meant that the Mexican was forced to pit on Lap 20, bolting on a set of mediums. After a relatively short medium-stint, he pitted again on Lap 43.

There was also a long distance chess game as some drivers tried to gain, or stop others from gaining, the extra point for the race fastest lap. In the end, Ferrari’s Charles Leclec won that battle, having set the quickest lap on the on Pirelli’s red-banded tyres on the last lap.

Piastri drove the longest stint on the Medium, doing the opening 39 laps on a set of the C4. The longest stint of all on one set of tyres came from one of the specialists in this discipline, namely Bottas who ran 49 laps on the Hard.

Reflecting on the strategy, Isola noted: “In terms of strategy, the predictions going into the event were confirmed, with the one-stop being the outright favourite and starting on the Medium before switching to the Hard proving to be the quickest of all the various combinations.

“Piastri was a good example of this, because even starting from a long way back on the grid, he adopted the same strategy as those at the front and was able to finish in the points.

“Usually, one-stop races require careful tyre management, but today we saw that the drivers were able to push without worrying too much about degradation, which was very limited on both compounds.

“The Medium showed a few signs of graining, but that did not affect performance excessively, while the Hard always performed well, even for those running the longest stints which came close to the 50 laps mark.”