Lewis Hamilton says whether or not he has a chance at snatching second in the drivers championship is up to the under-pressure Sergio Pérez after the Mexican’s first-lap crash slashed the margin between them to 20 points.

Pérez’s struggles this season have left him with less than half of champion teammate Max Verstappen’s points total, and he’s now vulnerable to attack from Hamilton behind, particularly as Mercedes grows in confidence with its latest series of updates.

Hamilton’s disqualification from the United States Grand Prix blew out the shrinking margin to 39 points, but Pérez’s first-lap crash at his home Mexico City Grand Prix allowed the Briton to close to within 20 points.

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Aussie rising star Jack Doohan says his racing future is secure despite being unable to confirm a program for 2024.

Doohan is currently competing in his second season of Formula 2, where he’s fourth in the championship standings with one round to go in Abu Dhabi.

The 20-year-old, who is also Alpine’s Formula 1 reserve driver, has said he won’t recontest the junior series next year, with his focus switching to securing a seat on the premier-class grid.

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Daniel Ricciardo was surprisingly plucky for a man who’d finished his previous race stone-cold last.

Just days before arriving in Mexico City, Ricciardo had trundled to 15th at the United States Grand Prix, his first race back from a broken hand ending anonymously a lap down from the leaders.

And yet here he was seemingly brimming with confidence for his second crack behind the wheel.

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Max Verstappen is accumulating Formula 1 records so fast that he’s starting to re-break some of his own.

Verstappen’s 16th win of the season eclipses the previous best of 15 set by — you guessed it — himself last season.

Of course you might argue that numbers like these are historically meaningless with so many races in modern F1.

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For exciting results, just remove oxygen.

Mexico City always produces interesting and unusual results, with its elevation at 2.2 kilometres above sea level creating a unique set of conditions for Formula 1.

The thin air means there’s less grip. Small changes in track temperature have a huge impact on grip — and the track temperature can vary massively based on minor changes in cloud cover.

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Lando Norris opened the Mexico City Grand Prix weekend by declaring that McLaren wouldn’t be very competitive.

As has often been the case this year, the exact opposite of his pessimistic forecast appears to be coming true.

To be fair to Norris, on paper this track shouldn’t suit the MCL60. It’s mostly slow, fiddly corners of the kind the car hates, even after its massive round of mid-year upgrades. The low-grip conditions are also generally not McLaren territory, nor are the long straights.

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Max Verstappen topped a drizzly FP2 to sweep Friday practice at the Mexico City Grand Prix.

Light rain arrived in time for the start of the session and intensified in the last sector in the last 15 minutes, but it was never hard enough to suspend running or force drivers onto wet-weather tires.

The cooler track conditions appeared to bring the field closer together, with seven manufacturers represented in the top eight, which was spread over just 0.391s.

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Max Verstappen has pipped Alex Albon to top spot in first practice at the Mexico City Grand Prix.

Verstappen set the benchmark at 1m 19.718s on a sole run on fresh softs, though he subsequently had to cut short his stint on the red-marked tire after reporting something loose in the footwell.

Albon was his closest challenger, the Williams car propelling him to a time just 0.095s further back thanks to a purple first sector.

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There are 20 drivers competing in Formula 1 this season, but Mexico’s energetic crowd has eyes only for Sergio Pérez.

The Mexico City Grand Prix is built on Pérez’s idol-like status in his home country, where he’s held up as one of the nation’s great sporting exports.

It might be easy to see Pérez only through the lens of his struggles this season, but it’s worth remembering the body of work he’s put together over more than a decade in the sport, including six victories — one of which was a superb midfield win with Racing Point — and 28 other podiums.

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Aussie rising star Jack Doohan has his sights firmly set on Formula 1 after getting his first taste of a grand prix weekend in Mexico City.

Doohan took part in first practice at the Mexico City Grand Prix as the most senior member of Alpine’s junior driver academy, standing in for Esteban Ocon.

It was the culmination of his junior program with the team that has so far featured three private tests in last year’s car as well as 100 kilometres in the current Alpine for a filming day.

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Former McLaren F1 mechanic turned author, TV presenter, YouTuber and speaker Marc Priestley joins hosts Matt Clayton and Michael Lamonato to talk about how he cut his teeth in the sport with McLaren’s test team (01:51), his first memories of what made Lewis Hamilton special (05:38), the fractious intra-team 2007 title fight and Hamilton’s first world title in 2008 (08:20), how McLaren fell from the front from 2009 and the team’s slow build to competitiveness since (11:34), Red Bull’s dominant 2022 season (17:10), the stigma of Red Bull’s cost cap breach and the similarities to McLaren’s 2007 ‘Spygate’ scandal (20:54), and where Ferrari have fallen short in their bid to end a long title drought (25:15).

Max Verstappen easily defeats Lewis Hamilton in the Mexico City Grand Prix with a bold one-stop strategy gamble to confound the Mercedes pit wall. Featuring F1’s pre-eminent stats man, Sean Kelly.

Daryl Somers bans us from interviews after we repeatedly and incessantly insist that Jason Donovan was robbed of the 1989 Gold Logie.

Max Verstappen dominated old rival Lewis Hamilton to win the Mexico City Grand Prix and break the record for most wins in a season.

The Dutchman got the perfect start from pole to hold the lead through the first three turns from George Russell and Hamilton, who started second and third but squabbled between themselves in the Red Bull’s slipstream.

Hamilton passed Russell, who was then demoted to fourth by Sergio Perez, leaving Verstappen to establish a 1.3s gap by the end of the lap. Hamilton kept him honest without threatening a pass, keeping him within 2.5s.

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Max Verstappen will start the Mexico City Grand Prix from pole position alongside George Russell after a strong afternoon for Mercedes.

The German marque had topped the first two qualifying segments, but Verstappen unleashed in Q3 to put 0.132s on the rest of the field led by Russell. Lewis Hamilton slotted into a close third but had his lap deleted for cutting Turn 3, forcing him into a one-run session at the death.

Verstappen was first out among the top three for the second runs and immediately slammed on a faster time, lowering the benchmark by 0.172s to 1m17.947s.

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George Russell led a Mercedes one-two in final practice for the Mexico City Grand Prix after Max Verstappen struggled to string together a lap.

Russell set the benchmark early with a 1m18.399s on softs, the most used tire of the hour, and teammate Hamilton crossed the line shortly afterwards just 0.114s adrift.

The younger Briton had the edge in the first and particularly the last sectors, while Hamilton clawed back around half the difference in the middle split. It translated to a comfortable lead for the German marque over the field, the W13 appearing at home in the low-grip conditions of the still slippery, high-altitude circuit.

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Charles Leclerc crashed out of the 90-minute Pirelli tire test topped by George Russell at the Mexico City Grand Prix.

Leclerc’s car spun off the track through Turn 8 and rear-ended the wall, with his left-rear corner suffering the worst of the damage. The Monegasque was unhurt, blaming a lack of grip on the experimental tires, as well as the dusty track, for the mistake.

The time it took to collect his wrecked car and repair the barriers cost teams and Pirelli almost 20 minutes in the middle of the session. By the time Leclerc found the barrier, Russell had already topped the session as one of five drivers granted 45 minutes of free practice during the tire test after handing their cars to rookie and reserve drivers in FP1.

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Carlos Sainz led Ferrari teammate Charles Leclerc to the top of the time sheet in first practice for the Mexico City Grand Prix.

Sainz, pole-getter last weekend in the USGP at Circuit of The Americas, set a best time of 1m20.707s to best Leclerc by just 0.046s in a largely trouble-free session for the works team.

The same couldn’t be said for the Ferrari power unit, however, which failed in the back of Pietro Fittipaldi’s Haas car after just nine laps in a plume of smoke down the front straight.

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