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Hamilton: Red Bull "out of reach" for Mercedes in Mexico

15:40, 27 Oct 2018

byNicolás Quarles van Ufford

Mercedes driver Lewis Hamilton has conceded that Red Bull Racing's pace at Mexico this weekend is out of reach for the German team, as both Mercedes cars were over a second behind the Bulls in both practice sessions on Friday.

Max Verstappen ended on top in both sessions with Daniel Ricciardo right behind him, a full second in front of any other car. The quickest other car was Renault's Carlos Sainz in both instances, with the Spaniard finishing third in both FP1 and FP2.

The main reason for Mercedes' lack of pace is because the 'party mode', the setting on both Mercedes' and Ferrari's engine which gives them extra speed for a hot lap, doesn't work in Mexico City because of the altitude. That gives Red Bull the advantage, as the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez favours the high-downforce cars despite the long straights.

“Red Bull’s obviously out of our reach at the moment, but the Ferraris are just with us or just slightly ahead,” Hamilton told Crash.net.

“I think on the long run I was right there with Sebastian’s times, so we’ll have a bit of a battle.

“There’s not one particular area, there’s just a bunch of things that we can improve on. The car was good in some places and not so good in some other places.

“We have the biggest wings on but we’re quite quick on the straights, but through corners, there’s not a lot of grip, even with the Hypersoft, which of course wasn’t the case for the Red Bulls. We’ve got some ground to catch up on.”

Hamilton only needs to finish seventh this Sunday to win his fifth drivers' championship, and that is if Vettel wins the race. If the German finishes anywhere below P1, Hamilton also wins the title.

“I want to win, that’s only ever my goal,” Hamilton countered to that point.

“I don’t go into the race thinking ‘well if I have a good race with Sebastian and finish seventh, that would be good’ so that’s not on my mind.

“Obviously I’ve done a lot up to now to have the margin that I have, but yeah, we’re here to try and compete and try and do the best we can and have a real race.”