Mexican Grand Prix 2016: 5 Bold Predictions for Mexico City Race
The 19th round of the 2016 Formula One season will take place at this weekend's Mexican Grand Prix at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, where Lewis Hamilton has to keep the momentum going.
The three-time world champion ended a five-race winless run at last weekend's United States GP in Austin, Texas, where he dominated from pole position to slice Mercedes team-mate Nico Rosberg's championship lead.
With Rosberg still holding a 26-point advantage ahead of the final three grands prix, the German can secure his first world championship in Mexico City, with Hamilton under pressure to take the title fight to the next round in Brazil.
We've referred to our crystal ball to come up with five predictions for the Mexican GP, with Ferrari, a surprise podium finisher, a home howler and a shock point-scorer all featured.
Lewis Hamilton Will Win After Pressurising Nico Rosberg into a Mistake
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Hamilton produced one of his most dominant performances of 2016 in the United States GP but, by his own admission, he couldn't truly enjoy it.
"That was the longest afternoon I have had," he told Sky Sports F1 after the race, explaining why—given the amount of reliability issues he has suffered this season—he spent all 56 laps "haunted by the sound" he heard when his engine exploded in Malaysia.
If Hamilton was "petrified" at the Circuit of the Americas, he will be scared stiff throughout the Mexican GP weekend.
As reported by the official F1 website, high altitude means brake and engine cooling are among the biggest challenges at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, which sits 2.2 kilometres above sea level.
And with Rosberg playing for his first championship point this weekend, another powertrain problem would have disastrous consequences for Hamilton—the German will secure the title if his closest rival finishes 10th or lower.
Mexico, of course, was where Hamilton's dominance of F1 came to an end in 2015, with Rosberg's pole-to-flag win sparking a run of seven consecutive victories.
With the race held just seven days after Hamilton won his third world championship, however, his slightly limp performance could be excused, and the big, juicy braking zones at Turns 1 and 4—as well as the change-of-direction Esses sequence in Sector 2—should make this a Lewis circuit.
After being guilty of trying to force it in Austin, Rosberg will "keep it simple"—as he vowed after the United States GP, per Motorsport.com's Jonathan Noble—to claim a narrow pole position on Saturday before the ghosts of his past come back to haunt him in the race.
Under sustained pressure from Hamilton and unwilling to give his rival an excuse to take him out, Rosberg will either make a Monza 2014-style error under braking for Turn 1 or run wide in the Esses—a mistake he made in the last year's race—gifting the lead and the win to his team-mate.
All of a sudden, a deficit of 26 points will become a gap of 19 with 50 still to play for. Game on.
Sebastian Vettel and Kimi Raikkonen Will Collide on the Opening Lap
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It was at last year's Mexican GP where Ferrari started to fall apart.
After stumbling through a winless 2014, the Prancing Horse rediscovered its gallop in 2015, when Sebastian Vettel's three assured victories made the team a more dangerous threat than at any stage since Michael Schumacher's retirement at the end of 2006.
But upon F1's return to the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriquez, the scene of one of the all-time great moments in Ferrari's grand prix history, the horse developed another limp.
So dependable until that point, Vettel produced his worst performance of the year, suffering a puncture after turning in on Daniel Ricciardo at Turn 1 before running wide, spinning and later crashing out, while Kimi Raikkonen continued his late-career crisis by hitting Valtteri Bottas for a second time in three weeks.
"It was not a good day for us today. The car was good—just not the drivers," Vettel told the official F1 website after the race, explaining how Ferrari "didn't show their true colours here."
And, in truth, they haven't done so since.
Under the more-bravado-than-brains management of Sergio Marchionne and Maurizio Arrivabene, the Scuderia—a breath of fresh air a year ago—have become "a group of scared people" operating in "a climate of fear," as Luca Baldisserri recently told Italy's Corriere dello Sport (h/t Motorsport.com's Pablo Elizalde).
With two long, Monza-style straights, the Mexican GP will represent Ferrari's last chance to rescue themselves from a second winless season in three years.
But the sheer pressure to take advantage of the opportunity—to seize that chance—will lead to them spurning another strong result.
After locking out the second row of the grid, Vettel and Raikkonen will attack Mercedes' championship protagonists—who will be reluctant to fight any battles they don't need to win at this stage of the year—on the run towards Turn 1.
Yet a lockup under braking will see Vettel slide into the side of his team-mate's car, taking out both Ferraris on the spot.
Valtteri Bottas Will Secure a 2nd Successive Mexican GP Podium for Williams
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The Japanese GP should have signalled the beginning of the end of the fight for fourth in the constructors' championship.
Force India's seven-eight finish at Suzuka, on an afternoon when the Williams cars finished more than 40 seconds behind, gave the former a 10-point advantage over their fellow Mercedes customers with just four rounds remaining.
At that stage, most were expecting Force India—a better team with a better car and better drivers—to simply leave Williams behind, but the United States GP offered a reminder of just how quickly things can change.
Having looked like the driver most likely to cause an upset at the Circuit of the Americas, Nico Hulkenberg was eliminated on the opening lap, while Sergio Perez—who qualified out of position after letting Force India's resident time-waster, Alfonso Celis Jr., drive his car in practice—was spun by Daniil Kvyat.
Hulkenberg at least managed to take Bottas down with him by giving the Finn a puncture during his first-corner tangle with Vettel, with Perez further limiting the damage by recovering to eighth.
Yet the seventh-place finish claimed by Felipe Massa—which could so easily have been fifth had the Brazilian not dithered behind Carlos Sainz Jr.'s underpowered Toro Rosso in the latter stages—took two points out of Force India's points lead.
Not much, granted, but just enough to make Force India nervous ahead of a grand prix that should represent Williams' best chance of securing a strong result in the remaining three races.
On the evidence of the teams' respective performances in Canada and Italy, the high-speed first sector in Mexico should hurt the "rake cars" of Force India, Red Bull and McLaren-Honda while favouring the low-downforce Williams FW38, which could be the third-fastest car behind Mercedes and Ferrari this weekend.
In September, deputy team principal Claire Williams told Autosport (h/t Eurosport) how a single podium finish for either Williams or Force India could decide the fight for fourth.
And—having finally committed his future to the team who made him, per Autosport (h/t Eurosport)—Bottas will get it for Williams, securing his second podium of 2016 and his second in as many seasons in Mexico.
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Esteban Gutierrez Will Miss out on a Point After Crashing in the Stadium Section
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Mexico's enthusiasm for F1 was there for all to see every single time Perez passed through the stadium section in last year's event.
Whenever the lime-green helmeted Force India came into view, the 30,000 folk rose to their feet and saluted a driver who, with seven podium finishes to his name, sits behind only Pedro Rodriguez as the most successful F1 driver in the nation's history.
The public's admiration for Perez—a future Ferrari driver—is understandable, but how will they respond to the other Mexican on the 2016 grid?
If Checo is a national treasure, Esteban Gutierrez is a local embarrassment having registered just one points finish in almost three full seasons.
The Haas driver has come close to adding to his tally at various points this season, finishing 11th on no fewer than five separate occasions, but he is yet to build upon the six points he scored in the 2013 Japanese GP.
Gutierrez's best chance of scoring in 2016 arguably came in September's Italian GP, where he became the first Haas driver to reach Q3, only to drop from 10th to 20th with a poor start.
On that occasion, team principal Guenther Steiner made no attempt to defend his driver, simply suggesting "the pressure got to him" at a time when a top-10 finish would have secured his F1 future, per ESPN F1's Nate Saunders.
And with his future still uncertain—Steiner recently told Motorsport.com's Luis Ramirez how Haas expected more from Gutierrez in 2016—the memories of Monza will return this weekend, when the Monterrey native will humiliate himself in front of his home crowd.
As in Italy, the low-downforce, Ferrari-powered VF-16 should perform well at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, where he will return to Q3 and run relatively comfortably inside the top 10 for much of the race.
With the chequered flag in sight, however, Gutierrez will make a mistake at Turn 12, the sharp right-hander on the entry to the stadium section, and plough into the outside barrier in front of his people.
People who—much like his employers—would quite like to disown him.
Marcus Ericsson Will Sneak a Point for Sauber
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Sauber were so close to, yet still so very far from, scoring a point at the United States GP.
With the C35 car simply not fast enough to carry them into the top 10, the Swiss outfit "have to choose different ways" in order to manoeuvre themselves into the points, as team principal Monisha Kaltenborn told the team's official website after the race.
And that need to try something different led to Sauber experimenting with one-stop strategies for Marcus Ericsson and Felipe Nasr despite a mix of two and three stops being the order of the day.
That gamble seemed set to become a masterstroke when Raikkonen's retirement elevated Ericsson to 11th with less than 20 laps remaining, but the challenge of spending 38 laps on a single set of medium tyres was too difficult to pull off.
After Kvyat, a fellow one-stopper, mugged him at Turn 1 on Lap 49 of 56, Ericsson dropped like a stone, falling to 14th at the chequered flag.
With just three races left, the prospect of Sauber pipping Manor to 10th in the constructors' standings is remote, but such is the high-speed nature of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez that both backmarkers—with two of the best powertrains on the grid—may fancy their chances of scoring this weekend.
As noted by Pirelli's official race preview, a one-stop strategy is possible in Mexico, with motorsport boss Paul Hembery explaining the use of the supersoft compound will "present some interesting alternatives to the two-stop strategy that proved to be by far the most popular option in 2015."
Sauber will again head in a different direction and, this time, they will succeed when Gutierrez's late-race howler promotes Ericsson to 10th and breaks Manor hearts.
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