08/11/2021
NEWS STORY
Lewis Hamilton has criticised his Mercedes teammate, Valtteri Bottas for leaving the door open for his championship rival.
If nothing else, the 2021 Gran Premio de la Ciudad de Mexico proved that, contrary to F1 folklore, a race can be won on the opening lap, indeed at the first corner.
For that is effectively what happened at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez on Sunday when pole-man, Valtteri Bottas "opened up the sea" for Max Verstappen.
Not waiting for the Finn to utter a polite "after you", the Dutchman passed the Mercedes pair on the run to the first corner, subsequently out-braking them to take a lead he only relinquished at his pit stop.
"I had envisaged it differently, naturally" said Lewis Hamilton of those opening moments, "in the sense that Valtteri maybe would get a better start and I would have tried to get into his tow.
"But obviously I was alongside him, which was good, and then I was just covering my side of the track, trying to make sure no one could come up the inside, so I was trying to keep whichever Red Bull I could see in my mirror behind.
"I thought Valtteri would be doing the same," he added, "but obviously he left the door open for Max. And Max was on the racing line, so he did a mega job braking into Turn 1 and, because I'm on the inside on the dirt, there was no hope for me."
To compound Hamilton's misery, and that of his team, Bottas was then touched by Daniel Ricciardo, spinning the Finn's Mercedes and dropping him to the back of the field.
"That made the race a lot harder, naturally," said Hamilton. "Having one car ahead just means they can play on the strategy.
"Their car was far superior this weekend and there was nothing we really could do about it," he admitted. "I gave it absolutely everything and even a great fight with Sergio at the end, but I'm really grateful I was able to at least get a second.
"I feel positive in the sense that I had a good race. I did it with the car that I had and the car was not good today. When you have Sergio behind you pushing you like that, you know the car is fast, so you know, I'm glad I was able to keep at least those two apart in terms of getting one-two for the team and we want to keep fighting.
"They've had the fastest car most of the year," he added, "so it's not a surprise. I wish we were quicker this weekend but today we were a long way off, so I don't really understand that, but we'll go back to the drawing board and try and come back next week stronger."
Pitting on lap 29, Perez didn't stop for another 11 laps, leaving the Mexican with fresher rubber for the final stages of the race.
"Sergio was super-close within that first stint and I couldn't really pull away from him," said the world champion. So it was a moment where they were either going to undercut us or we were going to undercut them. We stopped, and I think the team did a great job.
"It was just we didn't have really much left on the tyres at the end. But where there's a will, there's a way; we managed to keep them behind. One more lap and I think it would have been over.
"There's still four races," he insisted, "19 points is a lot of points and that's his ninth win so he's had a lot of wins this year.
"With their superior speed, if they were to carry them into the next ones then we may be in trouble, or we will be in trouble, but I don't know if they'll be using that huge wing they had on today, but naturally we'll find out when we get there. But I hope we're closer."
Check out our Sunday gallery from Mexico City, here.