With the United States Grand Prix behind us, there are a few points we can take going into Round 20 of the 2023 F1 Championship. Being only the 2nd race of this triple header, there’s still many points to take home and trophies to win. So let’s see who can fight for those podiums alongside Max Verstappen!
Not only this, but there is news that Red Bull’s second driver, Sergio “Checo” Perez will announce his retirement from Formula 1 altogether at the Mexican GP, in front of his home crowd. While speculations have been going around for some time now, this time it would seem as if the newspapers have reliable sources to confirm this. Will Checo go out in spectacular fashion and claim victory in front of his home crowd? Or will we see another Verstappen dominated race? UK bookmaker William Hill has the latest odds!
※ Current Odds Date & Time: October 25th, 2:00 P.M. (EST)
This time round, the oddsmakers have something special for us in store. The odds for this weekend’s race (except for Verstappen’s odds) come as a huge surprise. Especially if we take into account that Checo, despite his performances in the last few months, is priced at only 8.50 now. A significant difference compared to last weekend’s race at the US GP.
The surprises don’t end there however. Despite performing at the highest level, the McLaren duo of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri are priced at a staggering 21.00 and 51.00 respectively. This comes as the biggest shock of the weekend despite McLaren having the obvious speed and aero package compared to Ferrari. Do the oddsmakers expect McLaren to drop in the harsh Mexican conditions?
The Circuit
The track for this weekend’s race is the one and only Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez. An iconic F1 race track that hosted its first ever F1 event all the way back in 1963 when Jim Clark took victory. It returned to the F1 calendar in 2015 to the obvious joy of the Mexican fans.
The track itself is a 5.304 km long circuit, featuring 71 laps, 17 tight corners, as many as 3 DRS zones and covering a distance of 305.354 km during the race. The current lap record is held by the flying Finn, Valtteri Bottas, with a time of 1:17:774 set in 2021.
What to Expect?
Going into this race weekend and purely looking at the aforementioned odds, one must wonder what to expect from the Mexican GP? Although a difficult question to answer, we will do our best to give our honest opinions. Let us start with the elephant in the room, Checo Perez. We have to face the facts, Checo has been on every F1 headline for the last couple of weeks. For all the wrong reasons. Combined with his overall bad performances, this can only exacerbate his issues at Red Bull. Checo has two options going in front of his Mexican fans.
First, he may give it his best shot, drive qualifying lap after qualifying lap in the race itself, and thus proving he has the speed and mastery of the Red Bull beast. Or, underperform as he has been doing for the past few months. The harsh reality at this point perhaps is that Checo’s place at Red Bull has already been taken by someone else (Daniel Ricciardo). If this is the case, as cruel as it may sound, Checo doesn’t have that weight on his shoulders anymore to equal Max’s performances. Which, in its own right, is a Herculean task. We hope Checo delivers an amazing performance in front of his home crowd and fulfills his dream of winning the Mexican GP.
When it comes to the rest of the grid, as our long-time readers may have noticed from our previous articles, the battle for 2nd and 3rd place in the Constructors Championship is getting tighter weekend in and out. Following up on what we’ve learned from the US GP, it is safe to say that Aston Martin and Ferrari are the weakest links in this battle and will probably get “eaten” by the likes of McLaren and Mercedes. With sheer speed and better handling, the battle between the two Mercedes-powered cars is on and anything can happen!
