Track Torque: Messy results in Mexico spoil race
The championship looks set to go down to the wire.
LEWIS Hamilton drove a great race in the Gran Premio de Mexico to win by eight seconds from a hard-charging Nico Rosberg in the other Mercedes.
He now has a tally of 51 wins, the same as Alain Prost, and is only beaten by the greatest of all achievers in F1, Michael Schumacher.
The real excitement of the race, however, was the duel for third place between Sebastian Vettel in the Ferrari and Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo in their Red Bulls.
The results were marred by late decisions from the organisers who changed the results twice.
At first we had Verstappen in third place, then he was given a five-second penalty just before the drivers lined up for their trophies.
A smiling Vettel was given third spot and the trophy, only to find out later in the evening after the race results had been announced that he was to be given a 10-second penalty also for inappropriate driving.
This was bad publicity and poor promoting of a world-class sporting event by the organisers and I believe they need to be told this by the sporting fans of F1!
Verstappen found himself fourth behind his team mate in the end with Vettel just behind him but ahead of Kimi Raikkonen who was sixth in the other Ferrari.
The two Williams-Mercedes cars were very consistent and the younger man, Valterri Bottas, got the better of Felipe Massa, whom he beat by 11 seconds.
Tenth man home, right on Massa’s tail, was local hero Sergio Perez who gave the crowd their money’s worth with an excellent performance which included a quick spin off the track but very quickly back in the running again.
It had been a staid race in the front with exciting goings-on behind the leaders and Mexico did live up to its name of providing a spicy mixture for the huge crowd of very passionate spectators.
The points position is tighter at the front and it looks as though we could see the world championships go down to the wire, either in Brazil in two weeks’ time or right to the final race in Abu Dhabi on November 27.
Hold tight until then!
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