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FACTS AND STATS: Ferrari’s third Mexico win lifts them above Red Bull in standings
Ickx, Prost and now Sainz – three great names and the only three drivers to take victory for Ferrari in Mexico. Today’s win – combined with a shocker of a race for Red Bull – mean the Scuderia now trail only McLaren in the constructors’ table. But what other numbers came out of Sunday’s 71-lap Grand Prix? Quite a few it transpires…
• Sainz has finished first and second in the last two races. He did not finish higher than third in the 14 races before that.
• Sainz had three previous career wins, but this is the first time he has won twice in a single season (he already won Australia 2024).
• Ferrari had only won twice in Mexico before today (with Jacky Ickx in 1970 and with Alain Prost in 1990).
• Today’s was only the third race to be won from pole in the last 12 Grands Prix (Lando Norris did it in the Netherlands and Singapore).
• Sainz had never previously finished on the podium in Mexico.
• Sainz is the first Spanish speaker to win in Mexico City, the largest Spanish-speaking city in the world.
• Norris’s P2 was McLaren's first podium at this track since Ayrton Senna finished third in 1991.
• It was McLaren's 19th podium finish of the year, their most since 2007.
• With Charles Leclerc in P3, Ferrari came within eight laps of scoring back-to-back one-twos for the first time since Bahrain/Spain 2008.
• Leclerc finished third in Mexico for the second year in a row.
• Leclerc secured the fastest lap bonus point on the final lap.
• Ferrari have moved into second in the constructors’ championship, 29 points behind McLaren.
• With P4 for Mercedes, Lewis Hamilton finished off the podium in Mexico for the first time since 2018.
• Hamilton has had no podium finishes since the summer break.
• His team mate George Russell finished in P5 for his third consecutive top-six finish in Mexico City.
• Max Verstappen took P6 for Red Bull, having won the last three Mexico City Grands Prix, all by a margin of at least 13 seconds.
• Verstappen has not finished within 19 seconds of a race winner since the summer break (he finished 59.558s behind the winner today)
• Verstappen now leads the drivers’ championship by 47 points, the smallest gap since after Monaco in May.
• With P7 for Haas, Kevin Magnussen took his best result since finishing fifth in Bahrain 2022, his only other top-seven finish in the 2020s.
• For Haas, it was the team’s best-ever finish at this track.
• McLaren’s Oscar Piastri finished eighth in the 2023 and the 2024 Mexico City Grands Prix.
• In the other Haas, Nico Hulkenberg in P9 scored points for the eighth time this season.
• Haas scored with both cars for the third time in 2024.
• At Alpine, Pierre Gasly took P10, having finished 11th in the 2022 and 2023 races here.
• It was Gasly’s sixth points finish of the 2024 season.
• Alpine closed by one point on eighth-placed Williams in the constructors' championship – the gap is now just three points.
• Lance Stroll took P11 for Aston Martin, his best finish in Mexico City since 2017.
• Williams’ Franco Colapinto, who was classified P12, held the fastest lap until lap 62 (he came within two laps of setting the fastest lap last time out in Austin).
• Kick Sauber’s Valtteri Bottas finished in P14, but did run in the points today. He had only completed 20 laps in the points in 2024.
• Bottas went to the end of lap 50 of the 71 before pitting.
• RB’s Liam Lawson ran in the top six of a Grand Prix for the first time today, before ultimately finishing in P16.
• In P17, Red Bull’s Sergio Perez was the last classified finisher in his home Grand Prix.
• Red Bull have dropped to third in the constructors' championship.
• Fernando Alonso retired with a technical issue on his Aston Martin. His last DNF was Mexico City 2023, when like today he was also called into the pits by the team.
• After contact with the RB of Yuki Tsunoda, Williams’ Alex Albon suffered his second lap-one retirement this year.
• Tsunoda went out on lap one for the third time in his career, and the second time in Mexico City (he went out at Turn 1 in 2021).
• The first six laps were the longest Safety-Car period of the season.
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