Postcards from… Mexico City

Max Verstappen continues to notch up records without showing any signs of stopping. By winning in Mexico he extended his own record for wins in one season to 16, with three races still to go. But there's another statistic that's perhaps even more interesting. His win on Sunday was his 51st from 182 starts, putting Max on the same number of career victories as Alain Prost. And while the number of races that they each took to achieve this benchmark is quite similar (Prost had 199 starts) what's really notable is the difference in their respective ages at the time. Prost was 36 by the time he hit his 51st success, at the penultimate race of his career. Verstappen, by contrast, turned 26 only about a month ago…

With Prost's record equalled, Max's next target is now Sebastian Vettel, who preceded him as Red Bull's last world champion. The German lies third on the list of all-time victors – but Max could nonetheless still overtake him this year. After that, it gets somewhat tougher: Michael Schumacher is second on the all-time list with 91 wins, while Lewis Hamilton commands the all-time classification on 103. It's hard to know if Max will ever scale those lofty heights, but 10 years ago nobody ever imagined that Lewis would one day overtake Michael…

Hamilton is another driver whose hunger for victory remains undiminished. The eight-time world champion showed this once again last Sunday, driving like a determined youngster to seal a well-deserved second place. Not only did he showcase his talent with a magnificent overtaking move on Charles Leclerc on lap 40, but he also took home an additional championship point for the fastest lap of the race in the closing stages.

Hamilton has been absent from the top step of the podium for nearly two years – the last time was December 5, 2021, in Saudi Arabia – but he's as hungry as ever, and this weekend could possibly present him with his best chance yet. Last year, Hamilton's team mate George Russell was first past the chequered flag at Interlagos in Brazil. And if the opportunity presents itself again, there's no doubt that Sir Lewis will rise to the occasion.

Lando Norris probably left Mexico City with mixed emotions. On the one hand, he could feel encouraged by an excellent race, in which he fought back not once but twice: finally bringing home an excellent fifth place that at the end of Saturday seemed like something of a pipe dream. Lando also stood out thanks to a series of great overtaking moves; with his best example being that on George Russell through Turn 6. Lando showed plenty of pace and determination, which makes you wonder what the McLaren driver could have achieved had he started from the first three rows rather than P17 – the result of a combination of mistakes and bad luck in Q1. In any case, the 10 points collected by the Englishman, plus the four scored by his team mate Oscar Piastri in a disappointed eighth, allowed McLaren to make considerable progress over Aston Martin in the fight for fourth place in the constructors' championship. The Woking squad is now 20 points ahead and demonstrating the sort of pace that their Silverstone-based counterparts can only fondly dream of…

For Aston Martin, Mexico was the worst performance of the season. Neither of its drivers saw the finish: Fernando Alonso was forced to retire after 47 laps, while Stroll was classified 17th and last but actually stopped five laps from the finish after a collision with Bottas. This was the second time that the Silverstone team came home empty-handed – in Singapore Fernando was 15th while Lance didn't even take part in the race following an accident in qualifying – and since the Dutch Grand Prix, points have only come in single figures. In fact, Aston Martin have only brought home 21 points from the last six races, while McLaren have scored 145 during the same period. How times have changed compared to the first six races of the season, for example, when Aston Martin scored 120 points and McLaren only scored 17.

The biggest surprise from the Mexico City weekend was Daniel Ricciardo. The Australian driver snatched a stunning fourth place in qualifying, just 0.216s off pole: a position that Danny Ric hadn't occupied since the Italian Grand Prix last year when he was a McLaren driver. On Sunday Ricciardo demonstrated that AlphaTauri has taken a big step forward in terms of competitiveness and finished the race seventh: the best result of the year for the Faenza squad. The team led by Franz Tost has taken 11 points from the last two grands prix to climb to eighth place in the constructors' championship, on the same score – 16 – as Alfa Romeo but with a better overall classified finish: precisely that seventh place from Daniel in Mexico. As a result, Haas has now slipped to last in the standings. The American team had hoped to score at least one point with Nico Hulkenberg in Mexico, who was 10th until lap 65 but only 13th at the finish.