Mexican GP Review | Mercedes stagnates | Pirelli completes tests with 2022 tyres

Often accused of lacking character and romanticism, sometimes F1 is able to give strong emotions. An example has the name Sergio Perez, a driver of undeniable qualities, that exactly twelve months ago, was preparing his suitcase to say goodbye to the Circus having lost his seat in the future Aston Martin.

Those long faces in Mercedes show their fear of failure. The eighth consecutive title target seems to slowly fade away, especially after Mexico where the W12 appeared to have reached its development limit.

In Mexico Ferrari had an easy life with an inconsistent and struggling McLaren, although a pretty solid Alpha Tauri on both compounds could open a performance gap to Leclerc, who was losing grip on the hard tyres.

Mercedes margin in performance seems to be totally answered by a Red Bull in continuous technical growth pushing James Allison to reuse a W12 technical concept to the extremes.

Pirelli has completed 20.000 km on-track tests with the new 18 inches 2022 tyres.

Ferrari gave its contribution by covering 3500 km to develop compounds and structures but at the same time getting back useful information from the track, understanding the tyre's behaviour and developing the suspensions for its future race car.