November 06, (THEWILL) – With Red Bull’s title leader threatening to rip away from his major challenger on a crucial weekend, Sir Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes face a tough uphill climb to rein in Max Verstappen for Mexico City Grand Prix qualifying.
Only five races remain in the season and Verstappen stamped his authority on the opening day of practice in Mexico. As Mercedes anticipated, Verstappen did so with a large advantage over the field, nearly half a second clear on a track that has traditionally favoured Red Bull’s chassis.
With teammate Sergio Perez still in the mix, Hamilton faces a tough task just getting on the front row behind his championship opponent, let alone preventing Verstappen from winning his tenth pole position of the season.
“I’ve not really had any issues,” Hamilton insisted on Friday. “We’re giving it absolutely everything we’ve got and I think they’re just quicker than us at the moment. Got no real concerns, just chipping away at our setup and trying to improve it.”
A combination of a favourable track layout and high altitude – which reduces downforce and has historically favoured Red Bull at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez – appears to have swung a battle that has been tight all season away from Mercedes.
“The car has generally been feeling OK,” Hamilton noted. “But we’re lacking downforce which is definitely probably why we have that half a second difference between us.”
But, Red Bull team boss Christian Horner was not complacent: “I think Mercedes have still got a bit in the pocket so I don’t think we’ve seen their full potential. We’ve seen all year there’s been less than a tenth between the cars, and we expect that to be the case tomorrow.”
Mercedes’ Andrew Shovlin gave a slightly more upbeat assessment of the world champions’ Friday, noting that their engine was “coping well with the altitude” and implying that the margin might not be as large as it appeared.
“It’s clear there is a bit of time to find to Max on the single lap but we’ve got a few balance issues to fix so hopefully we can close that gap a little,” said the trackside engineering director. “The long run picture is a bit tricky because we were on different tyres to our competition but the balance is reasonable and the hard tyre seemed to be working nicely.
“We didn’t come here expecting it to be easy and there is clearly a bit that we need to work on but compared to some of our Mexico Fridays, we’ve got off to a decent start.”
Mercedes’ objective now is to repeat what Red Bull achieved in the previous race in the United States: fine-tune their setup and turn the tables on their competitors.
About the Author
Jude Obafemi is a versatile senior Correspondent at THEWILL Newspapers, excelling in sourcing, researching, and delivering sports news stories for both print and digital publications.
