The Formula 1 world sets its eyes on Mexico this weekend for the 2022 Mexican Grand Prix, where fans are hoping for a strong showing from local hero Sergio Perez.
Although Red Bull have dominated the latter part of the season, Lewis Hamilton pushed Max Verstappen right until the end last weekend in Austin and his boss Toto Wolff is hoping they might be able to go one step further this weekend.
Mexico City is the highest altitude venue on the Formula 1 calendar, with therefore the lowest air density, thus creating less drag, and Wolff is hopeful that this might play into his team’s hands, with drag being their biggest downfall at the Circuit of the Americas.
“On paper, Mexico looks good,” he said when discussing this weekend.
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“Our draggy car should be effective in the thin air, so yeah, I hope we can give them [Red Bull] a run for their money.”
Mercedes have shown improvement in the previous couple of rounds, finally becoming competitive with the front runners in certain parts of the weekend, but the team cannot quite seem to extract enough performance from the car to get that elusive first win of the season.
Lewis Hamilton is currently on the longest winless streak of his career, and should he fail to win either of the final three races, then it will be the first time in his career he has completed a season without a win, a record that the Brit will not be aspiring to break.
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While Wolff is quietly confident about how the Silver Arrow’s car might perform in Mexico, he has aired on the side of caution, suggesting that they have often been surprised with how the car has performed at different tracks when compared to their predictions from the data.
“I need to bite my tongue because sometimes this year I have said we should be looking good at a particular track and then we didn’t, and the other way around.”
Whilst Hamilton gave Verstappen a good run for his money last time out, the data shows that on the straights the Mercedes was the slowest car on the track, mostly due to the amount of drag the car creates, hence Wolff’s predication of a stronger weekend in the high altitude of Mexico City.