(Reuters) – Formula One statistics for Sunday’s Mexican Grand Prix at Mexico City’s Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, round 19 of the 22-race season.
Lap distance: 4.304km. Total distance: 305.354km (71 laps)
2022 race winner: Max Verstappen (Netherlands) Red Bull
2022 pole position: Verstappen, one minute 17.775 seconds
Race lap record: 1:17.774, Bottas, Mercedes 2021.
Start time: 2000GMT/1400 local
MEXICO
Red Bull’s Sergio Perez is the only Mexican driver on the starting grid and would be the first to win a home championship race.
Lewis Hamilton (2016, 2019) and Verstappen (2017, 2018, 2021 and 2022) are the only active drivers to have won in Mexico. The race returned in 2015, when now-retired Nico Rosberg won for Mercedes, for the first time since 1992.
There was no race in 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic.
The race was won from pole position in 2015, 2016 and 2022. Hamilton, third on the grid in 2019, is the only driver to have won and not started on the front row since the race returned.
Sunday will be the 23rd time Mexico has held a championship grand prix.
The circuit is the highest of any on the calendar at 2,285m above sea level.
CHAMPIONSHIP
Red Bull and Verstappen have won both championships already, Verstappen his third and Red Bull their sixth.
WINS
Verstappen has won 15 of 18 races, his record run of 10 wins in a row ending in Singapore last month.
The Dutch driver has 50 wins from 181 starts and is fifth on the all-time list. Alain Prost, with 51, is fourth.
Red Bull have won 17 of 18 races, with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz winning in Singapore. Red Bull have also had a team record six one-two finishes in 2023.
Hamilton has a record 103 victories from 328 starts but has not won since Saudi Arabia in December 2021. Aston Martin’s Fernando Alonso has 32 wins, most recently in Spain in 2013 with Ferrari, from a record 373 starts.
POLE POSITION
Hamilton has a record 104 poles.
Red Bull have been on pole 12 times this season. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc took the top slot in Azerbaijan, Belgium and Austin, Hamilton in Hungary and Sainz in Italy and Singapore.
Verstappen has 10 poles for 2023.
PODIUM
Six teams and 11 drivers have made a podium appearance this season: Red Bull, Alpine, Aston Martin, McLaren, Mercedes and Ferrari.
Verstappen has been off the podium only once since Brazil last November.
Verstappen holds the record for most podiums in a season — 18 in 2021 — and has had 17 so far in 2023. Michael Schumacher is the only driver to have finished on the podium in every race of a season, in 2002 (17 races).
POINTS
Verstappen leads team mate Sergio Perez by 226 points and is set to end the season with a record margin.
FASTEST LAPS
Eight different drivers have taken fastest laps this season – Alonso, Alfa Romeo’s Guanyu Zhou, Verstappen (8), Perez (2), Hamilton (3), Mercedes’s George Russell, McLaren’s Oscar Piastri and AlphaTauri’s Yuki Tsunoda.
Tsunoda’s fastest lap in Austin was only the third by a Japanese driver in F1, after Satoru Nakajima in 1989 (Australia) and Kamui Kobayashi in 2012 (China).
MILESTONE
Verstappen took his 50th career win last weekend and will join Alain Prost at equal fourth on the all-time lists if he wins in Mexico.
He can set a record for most wins in a season, having equalled his 2022 haul of 15. He can also equal his record for most podiums in a season (18)
McLaren’s Lando Norris is one podium away from equalling retired German Nick Heidfeld’s unwanted record of 13 top three finishes without a win.
(Reporting by Alan Baldwin in London, editing by Ed Osmond)
