Year: 2021

Max Verstappen extended his title advantage to 19 points last weekend in Mexico City, and with four rounds to go, Formula One now heads to the scene of many championship classics – the Brazilian Grand Prix.

Instant thrillers such as 2008, 2012 and 2016 spring to mind, and the championship has been decided six times at the 4.3 kilometre track, but that will not be happening this weekend. 107 points remain up for grabs, so there is still plenty of time for Lewis Hamilton to turn the tide and claim a record-breaking eighth championship.

But Brazil is traditionally a reasonable rack for Red Bull, and they have won here five times, with the first coming in 2009 via Mark Webber during Jenson Button’s crowning moment. High altitude coupled with tight corners make for a technically demanding lap, while also necessitating an enormous amount of fitness and concentration on race day. Mercedes, however, have largely dominated since 2014, and have taken the chequered flag four times in Sao Paulo. Since the beginning of the Hybrid era, Ferrari have won just one race, and their increasingly impressive strength this season makes for a promising weekend in their fight with McLaren for third in the Constructors’ standings.

And this is the reason for the fanfare at Brazil. McLaren’s last win in the V8 era arrived at Interlagos, and there will be an opportunity for themselves, Ferrari, and possibly even Alpine to fight it out for the podium come Sunday. This is a notoriously unpredictable weekend, making the title race ever the more gripping in Brazil.

The Woking-based team are another in need of a good race this weekend. Daniel Ricciardo T-boned Valtteri Bottas at the start in Mexico, and would eventually finish outside the points, while Lando Norris claimed just one point in tenth, with Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz taking fifth and sixth respectively. McLaren now trail the Scuderia by 13.5 points, and their dual will be another fascinating watch until Abu Dhabi in December.

These fights are not all; Sergio Perez’s momentous home podium in Mexico, coupled with Valtteri Bottas’ horrible day from pole has resulted in Red Bull sitting just one point behind Mercedes. The Constructors’ title will surely also go down to the wire, and with just four rounds left, the tension between Christian Horner and Toto Wolff will likely be immeasurable.

Furthermore, it is not as if there is no history between the two teams here. Michael Schumacher moved over to aid Sebastian Vettel during his title-winning recovery in 2012, and Verstappen has competed with Mercedes for victories here over the years, winning in 2019, and claiming a sensational podium in 2016 following his infamous save.

We will see the last of the three sprint events take place in Brazil, with the sprint race on Saturday potentially playing a key role in the outcome of the race on Sunday. And of course, we all know what happened in each of the first two sprint weekends of the season.

This will be an incredibly pivotal weekend for the championship, and two-time winner here Lewis Hamilton will be fully aware of the importance of a strong result to keep himself in check with Verstappen. But can the Flying Dutchman take the win and put himself further out of reach? The Brazilian Grand Prix promises to be another classic.

With 12 points in the title race and five races to go, the excitement is palpable and there is no telling whether it will be Lewis Hamilton or Max Verstappen claiming the Formula One championship trophy at the FIA gala in Paris next month.

Five and a half thousand miles to the west of the French capital however sits Mexico City and the 4.3 kilometre Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. This wonderful Mexican festival of racing was absent from the 2020 calendar by virtue of the Coronavirus pandemic, but thankfully one of the best racing weekends of the season is back.

Verstappen has claimed victory in two of the five races that have been held in Mexico since the return of the iconic circuit in 2015, and on both those occasions, his current title rival Hamilton was crowned champion in the culmination of his tense battles with Sebastian Vettel in 2017 and 2018.

Both of those Grands Prix had plenty in the entertainment department, as did Hamilton’s two wins in 2016 and last time out in 2019 – he displayed his wholesale brilliance with a mega stint two years ago to hold off Vettel en route to his sixth world title in the United States a week later.

Speaking of which, the US Grand Prix two weeks back gave us one of our most tense duels yet between Verstappen and Hamilton this year, with the Dutchman producing a super stint of his own, holding off the current champion and taking the chequered flag only just ahead.

This extended his title advantage, which was crucial coming into the final few rounds, but will there be a resurgence from Mercedes this weekend?

This is a tough one, because Mercedes and Red Bull have traditionally been incredibly evenly-matched since 2017, and in a season that has been immensely unpredictable up to now, it is near enough impossible to foresee who will be on top come Sunday evening.

On the balance of it, it is a track that would tend to suit Red Bull better, with its short nature, the twisty middle sector, and the fact that Honda’s power seems to have been a match for Mercedes this season, but the Silver Arrows will still fancy themselves on the first two straights of the lap.

Ferrari have also been relatively strong here over the years, which gave us the enticing prospect of at least four potential winners in 2019, two years after Sebastian Vettel took a stunning pole position in 2017 before the race went upside down for the German. This will give them hope coming into this weekend, but McLaren lead them by a slender 3.5 points in what has been a splendid fight between them in 2021, so expect more side-by-side action similar to what we witnessed in Texas last time out.

That was likely one of the most fascinating battles we have seen on track so far this year, and Mexico has given us a lot of those moments over the last few years, and this will be a mouth-watering race.

That fact will also potentially bring the likes of Williams and Alfa Romeo into play for points-paying positions, so there is plenty of reason for excitement for a race that almost always delivers. And with Halloween having just passed, this will be one of the last times we get to see Alfa’s Kimi Raikkonen race in Formula One, so make the most of it!

Lewis Hamilton will be fully aware that he needs a strong result to keep within distance of Max Verstappen, whose Red Bull team are eager to start landing the final blows in the title fight. Let the festival begin.

Max Verstappen pushed his Red Bull to the limits after being chased by Lewis Hamilton all the way to chequered flag in the scorching heat of Austin.  The Dutchman, cheered on by his fans in Austin, just about managed to keep the fast chasing Mercedes of Lewis Hamilton behind and managed to get himself a crucial win in the bid for the Drivers’ Championship.

The race was largely played out on the strategic thinking of the Red Bull and Mercedes teams ever since the first round of pitstops. Hamilton, who was starting from 2nd on the inside line, had a great getaway in comparison to Verstappen and assumed the lead of the race going into turn 1.  Verstappen managed to keep up with the Englishman for about 10 laps before Red Bull triggered the undercut and got Verstappen into the lead of the race.

The battle of the strategies continued onto the second phase at around lap 30, when Red Bull called Verstappen in early again – perhaps a bit too early in comparison with Hamilton who them went on for 8 more laps, providing himself with a tyre advantage towards the end of the race. Mercedes’ strategy was proving to be the right one as Hamilton kept chipping away Verstappen’s lead but it all came to nothing in the end as the English driver simply could not get past the Red Bull. Verstappen now has a 12-point lead heading into the last five races of the championship and this win might prove to be crucial come the end of the season.

For Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez, it was a decent afternoon as he finished on the last place of the podium but the Mexican driver had to put in quite a physical effort as his drink system wasn’t working. Perez however kept his head and finished 3rd, which is a very welcome result for Red Bull in the context of the constructors’ championship.

It was Ferrari vs McLaren that was the other talking point of the race apart from the championship battle. It was intense racing from lights out between both the teams as they had a lot to fight for in the Constructors’ Championship. Charles Leclerc got the Italian team the best result he could after finishing P4 in what was a lonely drive for him; the other Ferrari of Carlos Sainz was involved quite heavily from lap 1 with the McLaren of Daniel Ricciardo and Lando Norris. The trio of drivers raced hard throughout the Grand Prix but Ricciardo got the better of Sainz by finishing P5, after the Spaniard was also hunted down by the faster Mercedes of Bottas towards the closing stages and only managed a P7, while Bottas ended P6.

Lando Norris in the other McLaren had to settle for P8 in the race but will take joy from the fact that McLaren still hold a very slender 3.5-point lead over Ferrari in the standings. Yuki Tsunoda drove a decent race for AlphaTauri and managed to finish P9, picking up two points for himself in the process. His teammate Pierre Gasly however had no luck as a suspension issue forced the Frenchman to retire his car early in the race on lap 15.

There were other retirements in the race as well and unfortunately for Alpine Racing, it was a double disaster with Ocon retiring on lap 42 due to an unexplained issue while his teammate Alonso retired close to the end of the race on lap 51 with a broken rear wing on his car. The Spaniard did provide a lot of entertainment in the laps that he raced after close battles with Alfa Romeo that saw him going off track multiple times. He came out on top in these battles but it was all undone towards the end because of his retirement.

Sebastian Vettel got the last remaining points place after finishing P10 in his Aston Martin despite starting on the penultimate row of the grid. The German driver made up places early on in the race and drove consistently in a Grand Prix which involved a few scraps with George Russell in the Williams, but the four-time champion did well to make his way through the pack to grab the final point on offer. His teammate Lance Stroll managed a P12 finish after he tangled with the Williams of Nicholas Latifi on the very first lap of the race. The Canadian driver recovered from that over the course of the race and managed a decent finish.

Alfa Romeo, who had endured the wrath of Alonso during the race, did manage to see the chequered flag with Antonio Giovinazzi finishing in P11 just outside the points while Kimi Raikkonen managed a P13 finish. The Finnish driver could not keep his car on the track towards the end of the race and wandered off on to the grass. This cost him a higher place and even a possible points finish with his Alfa Romeo.

Williams finished with George Russell in P14 and Latifi P15 respectively, an afternoon with not much for the British team to cheer. Russell, starting in P20, made up as many as five places on the opening lap but could not make more inroads apart from that. Latifi had to come very early into the pits for a front wing change after he got into a first lap incident with fellow Canadian driver Lance Stroll. Both the Haas cars finished last of the remaining runners with Mick Schumacher in P16 and his team mate in P17.

The main talking point of the race was the battle for the win as Verstappen extended his lead at the top to 12 points going into the next leg of American races in Mexico and Brazil. This lead could come in very handy for the Dutchman as these tracks have favoured Red Bull in the recent years. Hamilton will have his work cut out in the coming races if he is to have that alluring 8th world championship crown to his name.