October 30th 2023

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner was “very surprised” Ferrari didn’t grab an opportunity to attack Max Verstappen at the restart of the Mexican Grand Prix.

The race was split in two when it was red-flagged as a result of Kevin Magnussen’s heavy crash on lap 34. Verstappen led the field at the standing restart and Horner feared his driver would be vulnerable as his strategy left him needing to line up on the hardest tyre compound.

“That red flag was the worst possible time when you’re in the middle of a two-stop,” said Horner. “It neutralises the race and of course we’ve only got a hard set of tyres.”

Verstappen had discarded his first set of medium tyres after just 19 laps. Leclerc had pushed on to lap 31. With 37 laps remaining at the restart, Horner expected Ferrari would seize the chance to attack them using a softer set of tyres at the restart.

Horner thought Leclerc would seize chance to attack Verstappen

“We thought that Leclerc – after that long first stint, I was convinced – they’d take a set of mediums because it’s worth about five metres off the start line. So I was very surprised that they went with the hard tyre. You saw the medium on Hamilton was okay.”

While Leclerc restarted on hards, Hamilton chose mediums, and passed the Ferrari driver soon afterwards. Leclerc admitted his car was much less competitive on the hard rubber, though that didn’t become apparent until after the red flag.

“I think it still confirms the weaknesses of our car, it’s a very peaky car,” said Leclerc after the race. “Whenever we get out of the optimal window of the car, we are losing too much time. And that’s exactly what happened on the hard.”

“At first, I thought I could do quite a good job once we stopped. But then there was a red flag, the tyres cooled down, we went back out and the feeling was just not the same and I couldn’t find the feeling again with the tyres. So it’s a bit of a shame because before that it was really good, especially on the medium.”

Switching to mediums helped Hamilton take second place

Hamilton did not go as long on his first set of medium tyres as Leclerc did, and like him did not have a spare new set, yet Mercedes felt confident he could get them to the end of the race. But Ferrari were concerned their car, which has had poorer tyre degradation this year, would not be able to do the same.

“We had to restart for 35 laps, or something like this, and we were not expecting to be able to do 35 laps,” said Ferrari team principal Frederic Vasseur. He suspects the tyre and engine management the drivers had to do ultimately helped Hamilton keep his medium rubber alive long enough. “But it was ambitious,” said Vasseur, adding, “the set of medium that we had was a scrubbed one also.”

Ferrari’s hopes of catching Hamilton rose when Leclerc began to match his lap times from around lap 51. But Hamilton found he was able to lean on his medium tyres more in the final stages and even set the fastest lap on the final tour.

Lando Norris also set his quickest lap of the race as he took the chequered flag. It was a race of what might have been for the McLaren driver, who showed promising pace on Friday but failed to progress beyond Q1 on Saturday. Nonetheless his recovery to fifth was the product of a strong drive aided by an unconventional strategy – he was the only driver to use the soft rubber during the whole race.