Verstappen
Verstappen moves ahead of Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel for number of races won in a season

Max Verstappen of Red Bull won the Mexico City Grand Prix to break the record for wins in a season.

The world champion held off a challenge from Lewis Hamilton's Mercedes in the first part of the race before taking his 14th win of the year

The Dutch have won 13 races in the last 10 years, more than any other team.

Red Bull'sSergio Perez was third.

Mercedes had a chance to win the race after Verstappen was in second and third place.

The early promise faded after the pit stops and Verstappen moved into a race of his own, leaving Hamilton to fend off Perez for second place.

How did Verstappen's win unfold?

The question was how the different strategies would play out after Red Bull started on the soft tire.

Verstappen held the lead into the first corner, only the second time that has happened for the pole man in five races in Mexico, while Hamilton snuck past Russell into second at the second turn, followed by Perez two corners later.

Red Bull were feeling the pressure from the Mercedes in the first stint, as Hamilton tracked Verstappen closely.

The tension dissipated after Red Bull stopped for tires on lap 25 and Hamilton followed four laps later.

The question was if Verstappen could do the same thing as Hamilton.

It soon became apparent that the hard was not a good tire, as Hamilton began to drop away from the Red Bull.

mexico
The Mexico City Grand Prix always falls near the day of the dead celebrations

Hamilton was reassured by his engineers that the medium would drop away towards the end of the race after he complained about his tyres not being able to perform.

They held on and Verstappen took another win.

Wolff told Hamilton on the slowing down lap that it might not have been the right tire choice.

In the post race interviews, Hamilton said that Mercedes should have started on the soft.

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Could Mercedes have gone another way?

Russell asked his engineers to leave him out of the race because he wanted to go for a sprint later in the race.

The engineers decided that Russell's stop five laps after Hamilton was not a good idea and they brought him in for his stop.

Some will wonder if Mercedes would have been better off following Russell's suggestion.

It would have meant making up a lot of ground and leaving him three cars to overtake for the win, but in the worst case scenario he would have been no worse than fourth.

This was demonstrated by Daniel Ricciardo, who went for the medium-soft strategy, and made up a lot of ground in doing so, moving up from out of the top 10 to finish seventh.

McLaren terminated his contract a year early because it was so disappointing that it was the best drive of the year.

It felt as if he had come back. Wolff said on Saturday that he is in talks with both Mercedes and Red Bull about possibly being a reserve driver.

He kept seventh place because his gap to Esteban Ocon's Alpine behind was more than the 10-second penalty he received for colliding with Alpha Tauri.

There was a technical problem for Fernando Alonso's Alpine that helped the man move up.

The Spaniard was in seventh place most of the race but lost his position in the closing stages as his engine developed a problem and he was forced to retire.

Alonso's problem promoted Ocon to eighth, ahead of McLaren's Lando Norris and Alfa Romeo's Valtteri Bottas who just held off the charging Alpha Tauri of Pierre Gasly.