Mexico City Grand Prix: Preview – Pirelli

The second cease on Formulation 1’s lengthy journey to the Americas takes place within the Mexican capital, Mexico Metropolis, earlier than the circus strikes onto Sao Paulo to finish the run of three consecutive races.

On the circuit named in honour of the brothers, Pedro and Ricardo Rodriguez, the out there tyres are the C3 as Exhausting, the C4 as Medium and the C5 as Smooth, a step softer than prior to now, as was already the case final 12 months, the choice taken with the intention to open up extra strategic choices for the race.

The primary day of observe motion, Friday 25 October, shall be barely completely different to common. The second free apply session shall be completely given over to validating the softer compounds in Pirelli’s 2025 vary (C4, C5 and C6) in what is named an in-competition check. The session is prolonged by half-hour to 90 and all drivers and groups should comply with a particular programme established by the Pirelli engineers. Other than the dry tyre allocation particularly for the Grand Prix (two units of Exhausting, three of Medium and 7 of Smooth, one lower than common), every driver may have two extra units of tyres: one shall be equivalent to the one out there for the weekend, to behave as a baseline, whereas the opposite shall be a 2025 prototype possibility, each when it comes to compound and of development – truly the latter already homologated again in September.

These two units won’t have any sidewall color bands. The plan is for the programme to incorporate a efficiency run and a future for every set, with each workforce working the identical variety of laps with the same amount of gasoline on board, depending on the kind of run. The one exception shall be within the case of an everyday race driver being changed for FP1 by a younger driver. These race drivers will perform the Pirelli check for 60 minutes of FP2 solely and may have an extra set of Medium compound tyres to catch up as a lot as doable on buying information for the remainder of the weekend. All of the check information will then be analysed by Pirelli engineers to wonderful tune the traits of the compounds previous to the group check in Abu Dhabi, which begins on the Tuesday after the ultimate spherical of the 2024 championship. It signifies that groups should put together their vehicles for qualifying and the race within the house of two hours: FP1 on Friday and FP3 on Saturday.

The Hermanos Rodriguez observe is 4.304 km lengthy, with 17 corners and a floor that’s low when it comes to its severity on tyres. This 12 months the promoter has resurfaced the part between turns 12 and 15 within the third sector. The very clean asphalt and the very fact the observe is hardly used signifies that grip ranges are reasonably low initially of the weekend and observe evolution could be very marked, rubbering within the extra the vehicles run.

Mexico Metropolis is situated at over 2000 metres above sea degree and the rarified air has an affect on automobile efficiency, lowering the aerodynamic downforce generated by the vehicles. One of many penalties of that is that high speeds reached are very excessive, regardless of a configuration that really appears to be like typical of tracks that require most downforce – the velocity report was set right here in 2016 when Valtteri Bottas within the Williams-Mercedes was clocked at 372.5 km/h – even when the extent of graining is often fairly excessive. Moreover, on the longest straights, the principle one and the one between turns 3 and 4, the floor temperature of the tyres tends to drop fairly shortly and the drivers need to be very cautious when braking, particularly at flip 1, to keep away from locking the wheels and due to this fact damaging the tyres.

By way of technique, that is often a one-stop race. Final 12 months, the vast majority of drivers tried to handle the Medium to elongate the primary stint as a lot as doable. A Security Automotive and a later crimson flag, after Kevin Magnussen went off the observe within the Haas, meant that just about the whole discipline used three units of tyres in a race that was just about divided in two.

Formulation 1 has at all times been extremely popular in Mexico, even when there have solely ever been 23 championship races held right here, all of them at this circuit within the capital metropolis, inaugurated in 1962. The races passed off in three intervals: from 1963 to 1970, from 1986 to 1992 and from 2015 onwards. A change of identify in 2021 noticed the Mexican Grand Prix renamed after the town.

There have been 15 completely different winners over the 23 editions of this race. Max Verstappen is essentially the most profitable driver with 5 wins, together with his Crimson Bull workforce on the identical quantity heading the groups‘ classification. Jim Clark has began from pole essentially the most typically (4 occasions) whereas Lewis Hamilton has essentially the most podium finishes with six. Of the constructors, Lotus on 6 has essentially the most poles and Ferrari leads the way in which for podium finishes with 12.