2021 Mexican GP Raceday

James Punt already landed a nice winner in his qualifying preview. Now it is time for his 2021 Mexican GP Raceday Update.

Yesterday’s qualifying session was a genuine surprise. Nobody saw Mercedes getting a front row lockout. Bottas had been quick on the dirty track, but as it cleaned up, the Red Bulls looked very comfortably faster, by around 0.5. On a short lap, that is a big gap.

Come Q3 and suddenly the table was turned. Something clicked for the Mercedes who found a heap of pace and the Red Bulls lost performance. Red Bull sort of tried to blame Yuki Tsunoda for going off the track ahead of their two drivers on their final lap.

Yes, Perez probably was close enough to Tsunoda to get distracted by the Alpha Tauri going off the track in front of him. That caused Perez to bail out and leave the track, lap gone. Verstappen was further back, and he may have had a momentary lift off the throttle, but it looked like the damage was already done. The car just lacked grip.

I suspect it was a combination of the track temperature going up in Q3, that they were on the soft, rather than the medium tyre and Verstappen was more comfortable on the mediums, and that the track was still maturing. It just came to Mercedes sweet spot at the death. It can happen.

Mercedes Have Straight Line Speed

We saw that the Red Bull was the fastest car in practice on short and long runs, but that the Mercedes was faster on the straights. That was always going to be a problem for the Red Bulls. The very long run down to the first corner is set up for the cars behind getting a tow and being able to get past before the first corner, especially if that car is already faster in a straight line.

Had Red Bull locked out the front row, there was a good chance they would have lost the lead on lap 1. But so long as they had the faster car, they should have been able to use the pit stop to overtake, much as was the case in Texas.

Now Red Bull have two cars on the second row, behind the Mercedes. Will Verstappen and/or Perez be able to use the tow down the long straight to make a pass on Hamilton and Bottas? Perhaps, but the Mercedes have more speed down that straight which will help them defend. There is also the fact that braking into the first corner is very heavy, lock up are common and it is very easy to run into the car in front. You then have turn 2 and 3 in quick order, further increasing the chance of contact, as we had between Hamilton and Verstappen in 2019.

Staying Out Of Trouble

An incident in this series of three corners at the end of the straight will see contact between cars. Hamilton and Verstappen will be aware that finishing the race with as many points as possible is the target and keeping out of trouble imperative. Bottas and Perez both just want to win the race, but both know that they will have to follow team orders at some stage. The first team order is do not crash into each other. It will be easier for Mercedes to get Bottas to give Hamilton the lead after the madness of the first lap is over.

The track is cleaning up as the weekend goes on, but it is still relatively dusty offline. This is a disadvantage for the cars on the even numbers side of the grid. Especially Lewis Hamilton. He has no cars in front cleaning the track and he will have less grip than Bottas and Verstappen.

Start Key For Max

Verstappen’s best hope is to get the jump on Hamilton off the line and get a tow off Bottas. If everything was perfect, he could then pass Bottas before turn 1. Things rarely go perfectly. Hamilton will be looking to move across the track to the clean line as soon as possible. If Max doesn’t nail the start Hamilton could just move over and close the door on Verstappen. We shall just have to see, but the nerves will be jangling.

It could of course be the case that the Mercs make good starts, use their superior straight-line speed to lead in to the first corner and dominate the race from the front. This is a track where following a car in front is very difficult.

The dirty air will further reduce downforce, already low because of the thin air, and then you start sliding, the tyres overheat, the brakes don’t cool down and you are in a very sub optimal situation. For that reason, Mercedes will be keen for Bottas to get out of the way reasonably quickly and to then keep the Red Bulls behind him, running in the hot, dirty air. Job Done.

First Lap Crucial

We have numerous scenarios but all of them depend on what happens on the first lap. Lewis Hamilton is still not the favourite with the bookmakers, which is a bit of a surprise. He can be backed at 2.50, compared to best odds of 2.25 for Verstappen. That reflects the uncertainty surrounding what happens on lap 1.

The pole position driver has won two of the five previous races here, second on the grid has also won twice and third place once. We have to consider Bottas and Perez. The two wingmen will be expecting to be doing a job for the team, but if Hamilton and Verstappen were to take each other out at the start, then they are in the game.

Bottas is a 7.00 chance and Perez 21.00 to delight the home fans. If you believe that the two championship rivals will be so desperate to be ahead after the first series of corners that they could risk crashing into each other, as they did in 2019, then going for the wingmen could pay dividends.

2021 Mexican GP Raceday: Guessing Game

Ignoring the roulette wheel that is the first corner, we must guess who will have the faster car today. The Red Bull was faster in FP2 and FP3. It was eachy peachy in qualifying until they went on to the softer tyre and the track warmed up a little. Today all the top 10 will start on the medium tyre, which must be a plus for Red Bull.

Yesterday’s air temperature was 22 degrees for qualifying and today’s forecast is for it to be 23 degrees for the race. There will be a little more cloud around which could cool the track a little, but it is very hard to say anything more than it will be very much the same as Friday and Saturday. I don’t think the track temperature will be critical, but the absence of the soft tyre will be more important.

Red Bull Faster?

Judging from what we have seen for most of the weekend, the Red Bull looks the faster car, but fast enough if running behind a Mercedes or two? Probably not. Red Bull’s best part of the track was in the slow sector three and in the corners, Mercedes fastest on the straights. You can overtake on the straights, it is much harder in the corners. Mercedes is faster in the right part of the track. They can win with a slower car, so long as they can keep in front at the start.

This is the most important first lap of the season and the car that is leading at the end of it holds the aces. Who that will be is anyone’s guess. We have backed Verstappen ante post so hopefully Red Bull can get a good start and rediscover the pace they showed earlier in the weekend.

Outside of the championship battles, we have Ferrari starting sixth and eighth, with Ricciardo the McLaren meat in a Ferrari sandwich, in seventh. Lando Norris did indeed take a new PU and starts back in eighteenth place. Riccardo looks to be more at home in the McLaren and his job is to minimise the damage caused by Norris being so far back. The Ferrari is the faster of the two cars here and Ricciardo will do well to finish ahead of either of the Ferrari’s.

2021 Mexican GP Raceday: Gasly On Track

Our ante post bet to finish top 6, Pierre Gasly, has done the job so far, starting fifth and landing our qualifying bet yesterday. He has been quick all weekend, but the Alpha Tauris have tended to struggle to maintain their pace over a race distance. They have looked to have the third fastest car so far, and hopefully he gets a good start and holds on to that top six position.

There has been a plethora of grid penalties this weekend and Stroll, Ocon, Norris, Tsunoda and Russell all get shuffled down the order. Of those drivers, Tsunoda looks to have the most potential to make up places on pace. The car is quick and if he stays out of trouble early doors, a top ten isn’t impossible. He will start on the soft tyre which isn’t great but not a disaster. It may well help him on the opening lap and so long as they don’t go off too quickly, he can switch to the hards for a 1 stopper.

The Alpine’s have been disappointing as have Aston Martin so I wouldn’t expect too much from them today.

2021 Mexican GP Raceday: Kimi Can Score Points

All of the shuffling has elevated Kimi Raikkonen to tenth place and Giovinazzi to eleventh. Raikkonen had been eleventh and twelfth in the practice sessions. He has gone well here in the past for Ferrari, but his job today is just to hold on to a points paying place. This will be his best starting position of the season and his performance so far has been better than usual. He has faster cars behind him, but they are well behind him and the likes of Tsunoda and Norris have their work cut out to make it all the way back to the top 10. We have seen Gasly coming from last place to finish tenth in 2018 but it isn’t a great track for coming from well behind to land points.

2021 Mexican GP Raceday Tip: 1 point Kimi Raikkonen to finish in the points @ 3.25 with Betvictor, Hills

That is it for any further bets for this race. We have a lot of eggs in the ante post basket and hopefully the first corner is kind to them.

-JamesPunt