Max Verstappen Takes His 16th Win of the Season at the Mexican Grand Prix

JAKARTA - Max Verstappen achieved a spectacular victory at the Mexican Grand Prix, Sunday, October 29. He took over the lead early in the race to finish ahead of Lewis Hamilton. This was his fifth win at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez - and his 16th win of the season.

Verstappen initially started the race from third position. However, he made an extraordinary start using help from Charles Leclerc who started from pole position, so he managed to lead the race when entering Turn 1. However, at the same corner, Leclerc collided with Sergio Perez who also made a fast start, thus eliminating the host racer from the race.

"Honestly, of course, we are having an extraordinary season," said Verstappen. "And today, of course, we had to start from P3, but I thought the speed of the car was very good.

"We tried a different strategy than the others, and unfortunately with the red flag, we couldn't really show it. However, with hard tires at the end of the race, I think we were very strong," said the Dutch racer as quoted by VOI from f1. com.

Leclerc was in second place ahead of Lewis Hamilton and Carlos Sainz when Kevin Magnussen crashed and hit the barriers at Turn 8 midway through the race. Magnussen survived the crash as he got out of his car, but the resulting damage to his car and barriers forced a red flag to be raised.

On the next restart, Verstappen retained the lead, while Hamilton - using medium tires - managed to overtake Leclerc to take second place a few laps later. The Briton managed to maintain that position, and Leclerc finished third on the podium, followed by Sainz.

Lando Norris was outstanding with a superb recovery from 17th at the start. He managed to beat George Russell towards the end of the race to finish in fifth position. The Mercedes driver then managed to hold off a final attack from Daniel Ricciardo, who also performed impressively with the AlphaTauri team and finished in seventh position.

Another McLaren racer, Oscar Piastri, managed to survive after colliding with Yuki Tsunoda and finished in eighth position. He finished the race before Alex Albon, who continues to make a positive impression with Williams, while Esteban Ocon managed to get ahead of Nico Hulkenberg towards the end of the race to finish in tenth position for the Alpine team.

Pierre Gasly followed his Alpine teammate in 11th, followed by AlphaTauri Tsunoda who recovered from a collision with Piastri to finish in 12th, as well as Haas Hulkenberg.

Valtteri Bottas, who is under investigation for colliding with Stroll in the stadium section, finished in 14th place, followed by his Alfa Romeo teammate Zhou Guanyu in 15th - who was the last driver to finish the race.

Logan Sargeant stalled on the final lap, and he was one of five other drivers who failed to see the checkered flag. Other racers who failed to finish the race were Stroll, Magnussen, Fernando Alonso and the home racer, Perez.