Unlikely lads Rosberg, Kvyat, Perez and Ericsson are the stars of the show in Mexico City...
Thursday 5 November 2015 11:43, UK
What a difference seven days can make. After the capgate debacle of Austin, a doff of the cap for Nico Rosberg for a performance of consistent excellence from start to finish in Mexico, blemished only by a minor mistake following the restart from behind the Safety Car that on another day - the United States GP, for instance - could have undone all his good work.
Thoroughly deserved, the victory was Rosberg's first since June's Austrian GP and only the third he has converted from pole in his last ten attempts. Quite what the victory - too little, too late as far as his title challenge was concerned - tells us about his ability to prosper in 2016 is a moot point, however.
There are victories and then are victories when it truly matters.
Rating out of ten: 9
With the championship in the bag, will Lewis Hamilton have minded much more than a jot about losing in Mexico? Yes and no. Defeat is anathema to a competitive animal such as Hamilton and he'd be loathe to offer his team-mate any psychological solace ahead of their expected 2016 rematch.
Yet so soon after his championship coronation, the Mexican GP probably arrived a week too early for Hamilton; in the circumstances a downturn in performance and intensity was inevitable. Nevertheless, and even in a race which was effectively won in qualifying, Hamilton still came close to usurping his team-mate for victory - and may well have done so had Mercedes not played it so safe on strategy.
Rating out of ten: 7
Sixth to third looks like an impressive drive from Valtteri Bottas - and in many ways it was - but the Finn certainly rode his luck along the way. The straight-line pace of the Williams car meant progress through the field should have been easy on the long pit-straight, as was evident by the overtake on Daniil Kvyat following the caution period. Saying that, his medium tyres were 50 laps old at the time, and he still made no mistakes in its execution.
Tyre-wear appeared to be a limiting factor for both Williams cars and perhaps his first stop compromised his race by being too early. But, with Sebastian Vettel dropping out, the podium was the least Williams would have expected on a power-hungry track.
Bottas was lucky to finish the race after heavy contact with Kimi Raikkonen early in the race, with the front-left suspension on the Williams absorbing a substantial impact. It would be hard to place any blame on Bottas for the crash, as he was alongside Raikkonen when the Ferrari driver decided to take the apex of turn five.
Another plus point is that Bottas won his qualifying battle against Felipe Massa leaving the overall score for the season at 9-8 in his favour.
Rating out of ten: 8
Red Bull boss Christian Horner described Daniil Kvyat's performance in Mexico as his best of the season and it was the perfect time to deliver. More than that, should the team stay around for 2016, then Horner has said that the drive has secured the Russian's seat next year.
The Russian was under huge pressure after an unforced error in Austin saw him crash out of the race, but the former GP3 champion responded in style by out-qualifying and out-racing team-mate Daniel Ricciardo.
Anybody who saw Kvyat race in the junior formulae will know he possesses tremendous speed, it is just a case of him being in a position to deliver it. The final part of this title winning GP3 campaign in 2013 in a Red Bull-liveried car was almost a mirror image of what was going on in F1 with Sebastian Vettel - pole, dominant victory, pole, dominant victory.
Kvyat was unlucky to miss out on a podium finish in Mexico with the Safety Car leaving him a sitting duck to Bottas, who was around 9mph faster through the speed trap, but it was still a fine performance. Given time and a second season, there is no reason he cannot deliver this kind of performance on a regular basis for Red Bull.
Rating out of ten: 9
Aside from a clash with Sebastian Vettel on the opening lap, there wasn't much to say about Daniel Ricciardo's Mexican GP.
The Australian was out-qualified by team-mate Kvyat for the first time in five races and always seemed a fraction off the Russian. Caught in a no-man's land of being quicker than the Williams cars through the corners, but slower on the straights, there wasn't much progress Ricciardo could make and he himself described it as a "frustrating" grand prix. With two races remaining in 2015, he is four points behind Kvyat in the standings.
Rating out of ten: 7
Six seconds separated Felipe Massa from his team-mate Bottas at the chequered flag, but the presence of the two Red Bulls in the gap between the two Williams cars meant it was undeniably the Finn who delivered the standout result for the team. Massa lined up just behind Bottas on the grid having been outqualified by a tenth, but lost position to Max Verstappen at Turn Five on the opening lap after running wide as the pack squabbled for position behind Vettel's slowing Ferrari.
Unable to pass Verstappen despite Williams' big straight-line speed advantage, Massa pitted a lap later than Bottas on lap 10, but struggled more with the rear tyres in the second stint and was overtaken by Daniel Ricciardo just before the Safety Car came out. Although he then stopped for fresh rubber, he was unable to pass either Red Bulls once the race got going again. A solid result, but nothing more than that.
Rating out of ten: 6
As Nico Hulkenberg was honest enough to admit on Sunday, the success of his Mexican GP was ultimately reliant on the timely deployment of the Safety Car which enabled him to take a 'free' pit-stop having made his first stop as early as lap nine.
"The Safety Car ended up playing into my hands, which is the little bit of luck you always need to get a good result," acknowledged Nico. The upshot, rather fortuitously, was only Nico's second besting of team-mate Perez in the last ten races. But he'll need rather more than lucky-ish seventh places in the final two races to overhaul Perez's 24-point lead in the standings.
Rating out of ten: 7
One measure of Sergio Perez's performance this weekend must be the way the home boy carried himself in front of his native crowd and tirelessly promoted F1's return to Mexico City. Another must be just how well he performed in such a cauldron of pressure. Far from being distracted by the burden of expectation as over 350,000 spectators crammed into Circuit Hermanos Rodriguez, Perez delivered another excellent drive on race day which was only derailed by an ill-timed Safety Car.
"We chose not to pit when it came out because we thought there was a chance to jump Nico [Hulkenberg] and Felipe [Massa], but in reality that didn't happen," reflected Perez. "Then the team told me that the cars behind had all pitted and fitted new tyres, so I was a bit worried because I knew the final 15 laps would be very difficult. To stay ahead of them and finish in eighth place is probably one of my best performances in F1." If he can maintain his current form through the final two races, Perez will surely end 2015 as one of the drivers of the year.
Rating out of ten: 8
An eventful race for Max Verstappen, but prior to that he had produced one of the laps of the session to secure a place in the top-10 shootout as the rain started to fall at the end of Q2 and an already slick surface became even more treacherous.
An off in the opening stages of second practice put Verstappen on the back foot on Friday. His youthful exuberance saw him push the limits on the slippery surface and spin into the barriers at the final corner, but that confidence is be admired. It just needs to be focussed into the right areas over the coming months and years.
Rating out of ten: 7
Unlike a lot of races this season, there was hardly anything to choose between the Lotus drivers on pace in Mexico - but, yet again, it was still Romain Grosjean who delivered the better result. On a challenging weekend, the Frenchman beat Pastor Maldonado by one place in qualifying and then one place in the race, which was key given 10th and one point was the most on offer.
The Frenchman admitted 12th on the grid had actually been "better than expected" giving downforce isn't one of the E23's strongest suits and then he ran a composed two-stop strategy in the race. Just two races now remain in Grosjean's Lotus career before his winter switch to Haas, and more points scoring from the team's most reliable performer in Brazil and Abu Dhabi are key if they're to hold off Toro Rosso for sixth in the standings.
Rating out of ten: 7
Pastor Maldonado finished the race where he started it - on the tail of team-mate Romain Grosjean. Perhaps, then, the Venezuelan extracted the maximum from his package over the weekend as the Lotus drivers qualified beside each other and followed each other over the line as the chequered flag waved.
Late in the race Maldonado fought with Grosjean for the final championship point, but didn't take any unnecessary risks, or put both cars in danger of not finishing. A solid, if unspectacular weekend from Maldonado, but he'll need produce better if he is to lead the team in 2016.
Rating out of ten: 6.5
It can be a thankless task at the back of the grid, especially when a driver's best efforts can go unfairly unrewarded. So it was for the plucky but point-less Marcus Ericsson in Mexico. No matter that he beat Felipe Nasr by half a second in qualifying or that he then successfully rebuffed Nasr on race day while, unlike his Sauber team-mate, successfully nursing his overheating brakes to the chequered flag. And to think that all will be remembered of his weekend will be the small print that he finished twelfth. F1 is a tough gig sometimes.
Rating out of ten: 8
No crashes for Carlos Sainz in Mexico, but no points either this time, after a hit-and-miss weekend for the Toro Rosso rookie. The Spaniard had braced himself for a challenging weekend after Friday's acclimatisation to the track and so was reasonably content to then qualify 11th - even if team-mate Verstappen did make the Q3 run-off.
A top-10 finish looked on the cards for most of the race as Sainz ran with the Force Indias but, pitting for a third time under the Safety Car, the 21-year-old "started to go backwards" as vibrations struck his car. Running wide at the restart meant an unlucky 13th-place was the forgettable result.
Rating out of ten: 6
A weekend to forget for Jenson Button as the Honda power unit in the rear of his McLaren toiled at the high-altitude of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.
After what felt like 100 engine changes over the weekend, Button's grid penalty probably would have had him starting closer to Cancun than Mexico City had it been fully enforced! At least he was able to rack up some testing mileage for McLaren and Honda - a small positive as he limped to the line only ahead of the two Manors. Up against such restrictions, it's hard to rate the Briton's performance against any meaningful gauge - although he continues to score highly just for keeping on smiling.
Rating out of ten: 7
Four races into his F1 career and Alexander Rossi has beaten team-mate Will Stevens four times in their private battle at the back.
The race duel was a battle of the two tyres as Stevens was quicker on the soft, but Rossi had the pace on the medium, and after complaining he was being held up by the Briton he was allowed past to finish ahead. Rossi also won the qualifying duel to level their 2015 fight at 2-2.
Rating out of ten: 8
"I'm pretty disappointed with how the race ended for me, after running ahead of Alex for 46 laps of the race," said Will Stevens.
The medium tyre proved to be Stevens' undoing with the Manor driver not comfortable on the favoured race tyre all weekend. The end result was finishing over 10 seconds behind his team-mate, who has been classified ahead in all four of the races they have contested together.
Rating out of ten: 5
Out-qualified by his team-mate and unable to look after his brakes, it was a disappointing weekend for Felipe Nasr. The Brazilian was understandably frustrated at being left out on track while his brakes were on fire and perhaps he could have been given better information from the pits on their condition during the race.
Nevertheless Saturday was also a disappointment, and being over half a second slower than team-mate Ericsson in Q1 and being out-qualified by a McLaren simply wasn't good enough.
Rating out of ten: 5
"I did a s*** job today," was how Sebastian Vettel was quoted as describing his race-day performance in Monday's newspapers, and it's hard to disagree with that blunt assessment. We know even F1's greatest drivers have off days - take Lewis Hamilton's Hungary as a recent example of that - but it's still rare to see a driver of Vettel's calibre flying off the road once, let alone twice, in the same afternoon.
Although the carbon-copy nature of his Turn Seven incidents initially led to suggestions that there might be a fault with his Ferrari's braking, Vettel shouldered all of the blame after the race. He even acknowledged that his turn-one clash with Ricciardo, which dropped him to the back and meant he was probably pushing the limit more than normal, wasn't as cut-and-dried as he first thought either. You can't fault his honesty, or his qualifying performance, even if there was plenty to quibble about as far as his driving on race day was concerned before he ended up in the barriers.
Rating out of ten: 4
There was certainly a sense of Finnish revenge in the thin Mexico City air when Valtteri Bottas refused to back down in his latest wheel-to-wheel battle with Kimi Raikkonen mid-way through Sunday's race. Having annoyed his younger countryman by punting him out on the last lap in Russia, Raikkonen should perhaps have realised his younger countryman was going to keep his foot in and taken evasive action - particularly as they were on different strategies.
The collision, and the Ferrari's immediate retirement, was a shame as up until then Kimi was doing a fine job of making his way through the field after a problem-filled qualifying and then engine and gearbox penalties had left him on the back row. His race engineer Dave Greenwood reckoned they were racing third-placed Daniil Kvyat at the time and Raikkonen's pace certainly suggested he was set to salvage a decent result. But yet again in the Finn's increasingly incident-filled season, it was an opportunity missed.
Rating out of ten: 5
Fernando Alonso's admission that he was heading for the first flight out of Mexico and not staying to watch the rest of the race was a clear sign of his frustrations on a nightmare weekend for McLaren.
The Spaniard knew his race was likely to come to an early end after an MGU-H problem was found overnight - and so it proved, with just one lap completed. Out-qualifying the Ferrari powered Sauber of Felipe Nasr was a fine effort and one small consolation for Alonso from a frustrating weekend.
Rating out of ten: N/A
