NICO Rosberg drove a terrific race at the Mexican Grand Prix to show recently crowned world champion Lewis Hamilton that he is still a force to be reckoned with.
It was a great display by Mercedes with the two cars only two seconds apart at the finish.
After Sebastian Vettel’s challenge in the Ferrari failed it was to be Valtteri Bottas that took up the challenge for first place on the podium.
It was an interesting race but disappointing for some, starting with Vettel in particular, who had shown so much promise in practice.
The Ferrari driver had a coming together with Daniel Ricciardo at the first corner which resulted in a puncture and pit-stop putting him to the back of the field.
He proceeded to fight his way through the field but ended up crashing out of the race on lap 52.
It was a bad day for Ferrari as Kimi Raikkonen had crashed on the 22nd lap, so neither car finished.
McLaren’s Fernando Alonso went no further than lap one after his car lost power and he had to return back to where he had started in the pits just five minutes earlier.
Once again our young tiger Max Verstappen gave us some exciting viewing early on, running as high as third place, but fell back to finish an eventual ninth just ahead of Romain Grosjean in his Lotus.
He in turn was just ahead of his teammate Pastor Maldonado at the chequered flag.
After the top three of Rosberg, Hamilton and Bottas came the racy Russian Daniil Kvyat in his Red Bull, followed by teammate Daniel Ricciardo in the other Red Bull.
Felipe Massa was not much slower than his podium teammate Bottas but such was the closeness of the cars that he was in sixth position.
The two Force Indias had a good race with the darling of the crowd, Mexican Sergio Perez, going very quickly in the early part of the race when he ran in sixth position.
But a mistake on tyre changes cost him dearly and pushed him back to eighth slot.
The race was very well attended by an enthusiastic and excited crowd who were very happy to have a Grand Prix back on their doorstep.
There are now only two races left – in Brazil just fourteen days after Mexico and in the UAE another two weeks later. More about that next time.
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