The drama started in qualifying, where Bottas crashed on the outside of the final corner. Verstappen, who was already fastest at the time, did not slow down past the wreckage and was awarded a three place grid drop for the race. Had he been able to start from pole position, he probably would have been set to seal a hat-trick of wins at the Mexican race. Verstappen got a good start, but Hamilton was unwilling to yield and threw his car around the outside of turn 1, with Verstappen ahead at the turn. Both cars nearly lost it, with Hamilton nearly taking out Vettel with his slide. Thankfully no contact was made, but it forced Hamilton and Verstappen off wide and dropped places. No fault with Verstappen there, and Hamilton could well have just settled for fourth. It meant that Verstappen, with a quick car, had to fight back and attempted and made a cheeky move in the hairpin in the stadium section on Bottas. Bottas, clearly shocked by the Red Bull, clipped Max's rear tyre, resulting in a puncture. Unfortunately for Max, the tyre stayed together for the length of the pit straight as he defended his position, only for the tyre to fail at the first chicane. From there, Verstappen did well to fight his way back through, even banging wheels with Kevin Magnussen on the way - and sneakily overtaking him off track, but shh nobody saw that. Incredibly, he did 65 laps on that hard tyre. That's been the kind of luck Verstappen's had the second half of this season. Driver of the first half of the year, he's just been plagued with bad luck, and it shows that Albon, who is still getting to grips with the car to be fair, has outscored him since they have been paired together. Red Bull should have more points and trophies to their name since the summer break.
Albon had a reasonable weekend, wasn't particularly on the pace in qualifying, benefited from the turn 1/2/3 situation and was running comfortably third early on. In an attempt to undercut the Ferrari's on a two stop strategy (which turned out to be the wrong strategy), the team pitted him early, but into traffic, where any advantage to be gained was instantly lost. From there, he just had to bring the car home.
It was a weekend that saw a number of pitstop mistakes, the biggest victim being Lando Norris whose wheel was not secured as he left his pitbox - having to stop at the end of the pitlane and his mechanics wheeling the McLaren back. He dropped to last and ended up retiring. It ruined Sainz's race as well as he was forced to stay out on hard tyres that simply did not work on the car. After successfully picking his way through the first few corners, he was on for another best of the rest finish, but it was not to be.
To that end, Perez had the honour of finishing best of the rest, with a solid race weekend and being cheered all the way by his home crowd. You can't ask for any more from him and the team.
Back to the front of the grid, Ferrari started one-two and it would be interesting whether they would orchestrate their start as they did in Russia (successful and unsuccessfully at the same time). Vettel moved over into the slipstream straight away, but it crowded Hamilton off the track. I'm really not a fan of doing that at the start of the race, weaving recklessly from one lane to another, you don't see it in Indycar where they have spotters for that kind of thing to stop having huge accidents. Has Vettel not learned from Singapore 2017 where he took his team-mate and Verstappen out? Perhaps Ferrari could have orchestrated it better and planned for Leclerc to move in front of Vettel and give him a tow to turn 1, but after Russia, would you ask Charles to do that? Anyway, for me, that swerve was not on for me.
Another botched pitstop meant that Leclerc lost too much time to be in the mix at the end. Vettel was left out for ages, presuming Hamilton's tyres would degrade, but they didn't and Vettel did not get anywhere near the back of Hamilton's victorious Mercedes. Whilst Ferrari have been on pole for the last five races, Mercedes have won the last three races on the trot. A large part of that has to come down to their strategy decisions. Why did they pit Leclerc first on a two-stop strategy. I know he gets first choice, but he was under no threat from Albon who was trying the undercut and was caught in traffic. If anything, they should have pitted Vettel to block Albon off, but perhaps they feared Vettel would undercut Charles if they had remained on the two-stop strategy. Anyway, one stop was the right way to go and they tried to leave Vettel out as long as they could to try and give him the most advantage for the second stint, but again that failed too.
Mercedes did well to repair Botta's car without taking any penalties, incredible really. Bottas ran a good race to finish on the podium, thanks largely down to Verstappen's horrid race luck, Albon's rubbish strategy and Leclerc's botched pitstop.
Hamilton was balked at the start which meant he was fourth into the first corner, only for his ambitious move on Verstappen into turn 1. He was lucky to not lost out too much ground after rejoining after turn 3, and the team masterfully put him on the optimal strategy. His car was damaged, which would have not helped his tyre management, but he did really well to maintain the pace and the tyre life to not even let Vettel anywhere near the back of his car at the end of the race.
Ricciardo's strategy propelled him up the grid, doing a mega 51 lap stint on the hard tyres. His ambitious lunge on Perez could have been better managed, the Renault clearly not as good on the brakes as the Red Bull he had previously. Hulkenberg was going a solid job behind too, but with the tyres well off the cliff at the end, he was punted into the wall by Kvyat.
I've moaned about this before, but the tyres have got to change to allow for better racing. I understand you want drivers to manage their tyres to get them to perform at the optimum, but the fact they overheat so easily behind another car is just stopping them from racing. It's really good that we're getting variations on strategy, and that we usually get to see degradation being a factor in some races, but there's still room for improvement.
The other highlight for me was the battle of the Williams drivers, brilliant battling out on track, firm but fair.
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