It was a good weekend for McLaren F1 Team, who gained more ground on BWT Alpine F1 Team at the 2022 FIA Formula 1 Mexico City Grand Prix.
Daniel Ricciardo, who is looking likely to not be on the grid next year, put in his best performance of the season as he managed to charge through the midfield into seventh, and finish in that position despite being given a ten-second penalty for an incident with Yuki Tsunoda.
The Australian started eleventh on the grid and fell back a few places in the first half of the race into thirteenth, after a poor start. That didn’t stop Ricciardo battling away, though, as he managed to climb back and get himself into twelfth ahead of Zhou Guanyu. The McLaren driver stayed out much longer than the rest of the grid and extended his Medium tyre stint, before diving into the pit-lane, where the team put in the fastest stop of the season, that was only 1.98 seconds.
Ricciardo’s second stint on the Soft tyres gave him the opportunity to move himself up the grid, and he gave the Mexican fans his best performance of the season as he managed to overtake Tsunoda, Lando Norris, Valtteri Bottas, Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon to climb into seventh. However, the work wasn’t done there with the Australian being given a ten-second penalty after the stewards deemed that his move on Tsunoda was too late and optimistic. This didn’t stop Ricciardo; however, who had pace to burn and built a big gap on Ocon to keep seventh place.
“It was a rollercoaster of a race. Ultimately, I’m happy. I wish it was more of a smooth race in terms of you never want to have contact, and you never want to receive a penalty. So that’s a little bit of a cloud over what was otherwise a good day, but ultimately it still didn’t change the outcome for us.
“I think the penalty was more than enough. I saw a replay and I’ll still take the majority of the responsibility, but it isn’t like I came in sideways and locked-up, I was just there. All he had to do was just miss the apex a bit and we would both get through that corner. I’ll take it but I don’t think it’s something I need to beat myself up over.
“I was pretty down when Tom [Stallard] came on the radio to tell me I had a 10 second penalty because it’s the one race where we had pace and I had a chance, but I still felt that I had pace on the Soft so I just got my head down and got on with it. Lando let me by, so that let me keep attacking, and when I saw the Alpines right in front of me, I was like ‘alright, it’s game-on here’.
“I knew if I kept George [Russell] behind me and didn’t lose the few seconds to the blue flag, I had a real chance. That was tense for a few laps – but then he pulled in for fastest lap and that gave me a bit of breathing space. All-in-all, very happy and huge shout out to the team, especially the pit crew for the 1.98-second pitstop – the fastest of the season!”
Lando Norris: “The team scored some good points”
Norris didn’t have the race he would have wanted at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, as he fell behind Ocon and Alonso at the start of the race.
Norris had a different strategy to his team-mate and the British driver struggled to show any real pace on the Hard tyres during his second stint, but still managed to score a decent number of points and finish ninth on the road, after another Alonso retirement. Norris let his much quicker team-mate through during Ricciardo’s charge, allowing him to attack the Alpines.
Norris will be disappointed that he wasn’t able to attack Ocon towards the end of the race, but he was pleased to outscore their rivals for fourth in the Constructors’ and hopes the team can continue the momentum into the final two races of the 2022 season.
“Today was a good race. I lost a couple of places at the start. It wasn’t a bad launch, but it wasn’t the best, and it’s a long run down to Turn One. I had to box when I did to cover Yuki, going onto the Hard tyres but they weren’t the tyres to be on!
“I lost a lot of time compared to Daniel who went onto the Softs, which was a much, much quicker strategy in the end. I’m still happy because I think we did a good job and got the most out of it that we could.
“The team scored some good points and we out-scored Alpine, which is the goal. We’ll head back to the factory to work hard ahead of Brazil in two weeks’ time.”
