> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://www.the-race.com/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Everything we learned on day one of F1's Mexican GP - URL: https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/everything-we-learned-on-day-one-of-f1s-mexican-gp/ - Published: 2026-10-29T23:45:54.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-29T23:45:54.000Z - Description: Unique Mexico demands get even tougher this year, while some frustrations from the US GP linger - Author: Josh Suttill - Tags: Formula 1, #mexican-grand-prix, #primary_homepage_feature The uniquely demanding challenge of Formula 1's highest-altitude race gets even tougher in Mexico this year, and there are some lingering frustrations from last weekend's grand prix in the United States too. ## 2026 turbos face toughest test… This year’s Mexican Grand Prix will be the first of the modern era where F1’s hybrid V6 engines have run without the MGU-H. Mexico City’s altitude has traditionally put extra strain on the turbochargers as the lack of air density requires everything to function at higher RPM. According to Honda’s trackside engineering chief, Shintaro Orihara, the loss of the MGU-H for 2026 makes the process of achieving sufficient boost pressure even more difficult here, calling it “quite challenging” to run without the complicated and expensive component ditched under this season’s new engine regulations. “Last year we had MGU-H, so we have some support from MGU-H, but this year we don't have MGU-H, so it's quite challenging,” he said. “For example, just only for idle, in idle condition, we have MGU-H support to get enough boost pressure \[in 2025\], but this year we don't have any support. Even in idle, we have big difference from last year. “Then also, turbo lag, that's most interesting or important topic in this track. I think not only Honda, but also all manufacturers, they will struggle with turbo lag, or \[find it\] challenging for turbo lag in this track. “Also, not only turbo lag, normally in Mexico, turbocharger speed is quite high to get enough airflow. Then we may... we need to check, but we may have some restriction on engine operation condition, if in the worst case. “At the moment, we have done a lot of dyno testing, and we believe there is almost no impact, or small impact on engine operation condition, but we need to check those things in free practice, and that can happen on all other manufacturers. “So quite challenging for turbo lag, and also engine operation condition.” The performance of the turbo is why Audi’s not got stunning hopes for this race. Its bigger turbocharger will struggle even more than usual to run at the required speed and avoid crippling lag, although it will at least be partially offset by reduced air resistance. “It’s not going to be easy for us,” said driver Gabriel Bortoleto. “Especially in that last sector, it’s super important to keep the boost up. “It’s going to be a first-gear last sector. And it’s one of the slowest sectors because we don’t have much downforce at this track, so the cars are going super slow. Then you want to get on the power as soon as you can to keep the revs up. “So it’s going to be tricky.” - **Ben Anderson** ## …with an extreme battery demand But it’s not just the impact the air density will have on the already-struggling turbos in these cars without an MGU-H that is going to be a challenge in Mexico. There is a specific battery demand too. Teams are expecting high levels of ‘torque infilling’ this weekend, where the MGU-K is used to help combat the aforementioned turbo lag. But the circuit layout means lots of opportunities to charge the battery versus deploying it because deployment will be saved for the three long straights. Without the MGU-H nothing keeps the turbo spinning when a driver lifts off the throttle. So in slow corners teams run the engine harder than the driver needs, and use the car’s remaining electric motor, the MGU-K, as a brake on the engine. It soaks up some of the engine’s power and stores it in the battery, so the wheels only get the share the driver actually needs. The engine keeps working hard, and that keeps the turbo spinning, ready for the exit of the corner. The catch is that this only works if the battery has room to store that energy, and Mexico leaves very little. With three long straights to cover, teams will save almost all their electric power for those and use barely any elsewhere. So when the battery is drained on a straight, the run of braking zones that follows, such as the one into the stadium section, quickly fills it back up. By the slowest corners, it is nearly full. With nowhere to store the extra power, it would all go to the rear wheels and spin them up, so the engine has to ease off instead, and the turbo slows down with it. As we’ve covered, Mexico’s thin air makes that worse, because the turbo has to work even harder to recover, even if that’s at least partially offset by less air resistance making it easier to spin the turbo in the first place. That leaves a bigger gap in power out of those corners for the electric motor to fill, sometimes more than it can cover. And every bit of energy it uses there, is energy that can’t go into the straights. F1 2026 is an uber-complex balancing act between straightline speed and how drivable the car is out of the slow corners, and Mexico will push it to the extreme. - **Scott Mitchell-Malm** ## This track’s become new outlier for cars, too F1's 2026 rules have moved the goalposts on the car side as well. This is no longer just an outlier circuit for the engine, several leading drivers are flagging how it now stands alone as an aerodynamic challenge. The high altitude and lower air density has always had a specific impact on the cars here but now the context is different. "Normally it’s similar to the downforce you have in Monza, but given that you don’t drop downforce for Monza anymore, or not much anyway, this is the outlier now," said McLaren's Oscar Piastri. "So, it’s going to be pretty challenging. It’s probably not going to feel amazing in the car." The 2026 cars have a lot less grip than their ground-effect predecessors already. As Max Verstappen pointed out, previously "we have the wings to compensate a little bit for that" – so you'd run Monaco-style wings and still only get Monza-level performance. "But now you basically just run one wing," he said. "So there will be a lot less downforce on the car, which I think will already be quite challenging. "That probably puts even more emphasis on the low-speed performance." Lewis Hamilton suggested there will be "25 or 30% less downforce than the last time we drove here". His Ferrari team has been tipped to thrive in the conditions as its smaller turbocharger should cope better with the challenge of having to run at a higher RPM to achieve the same output as elsewhere. He's also hoping "the car should be good here", although that depends on "whether we can get the tyre switched on" with such little aerodynamic load through the lap. - **SMM** ## Cadillac borrowed F1 movie car for Perez demo ![](https://storage.ghost.io/c/dd/af/ddafbd99-2ccd-468c-b622-4b3cccf80b49/content/images/2026/10/image-1.jpeg) Sergio Perez wowed 50,000 fans on the streets of Mexico City on Wednesday, ahead of the grand prix, despite Cadillac not having an F1 car he could use. F1 rules prevent you from using current machinery, so usually teams use their previous cars; 2026 F1 newcomer Cadillac, of course, doesn’t have a previous F1 car... So Cadillac made a pragmatic decision to borrow one from Apple instead, as it still has the modified Formula 2 car that was used as an ‘F1 car’ in the F1 movie starring Brad Pitt. Perez called it “really enjoyable” when asked by The Race, primarily because of a big advantage versus a more conventional showrun with an actual F1 car. “Normally, when you do show runs, you're always very worried about the cooling,” Perez explained. “This one was really, really good at it. I could do endless donuts with it, so it was really enjoyable. “People were super happy, and that was the biggest thing, to see the people enjoying it so much. It was a very special moment.” Perez is expecting a “painful” weekend on track but with a bit of help from Apple, he’s already done something donut-worthy for his home crowd. **\- Josh Suttill** ## The priority from Red Bull drivers’ Austin anger Red Bull’s frustrated F1 drivers stand by the bulk of [their criticism ](https://www.the-race.com/formula-1/why-verstappen-hadjar-furious-red-bull-f1-us-gp/)from last weekend’s United States GP and there’s one area in particular they want to see the team learn from. Between them Max Verstappen and Isack Hadjar suffered from poor starts, slow pitstops, dodgy radio communication, engine issues and flawed strategy as Red Bull fumbled a two-three starting position, with Verstappen finishing third and Hadjar sixth. They were fuming afterwards, and lay bare the extent of the team’s deficiencies on the weekend - which, a few days later, amounts to both drivers clearly pinpointing strategy as something that can be improved in the short-term, even if items like Red Bull’s chronically bad starts are a longer-term project. “We also had a lot of other little issues on the car side and the engine side that contributed to time loss,” said Verstappen in Mexico. “When you add all those things together, it’s enough time loss, and that for sure hurt our overall performance. "We just need to try and understand of course how it happened, why it happened, and of course then learn from the strategy. Sometimes you have a weekend where it’s a learning moment, where you can do better.” Hadjar admitted "unfortunately, I didn’t really think" with his blunt comments post-race, and there was “stuff I should have kept to myself, for sure”. He rowed back slightly on the “silly” things he claimed Red Bull was getting wrong a few days ago - this time he framed it as “there are important little things that we don’t well” - and his annoyance at another bad start shifted more to team boss Laurent Mekies’ message that clear progress has been made from the start of the year. Still, he said Red Bull “got it a bit wrong” on strategy in the US, and was “probably not open-minded enough” to put both cars on the faster one-stop strategy - only him, which Verstappen was annoyed and surprised by after the race. “In the end, that was confusing, because if we had all been on the one-stop, everyone would have been happy,” Hadjar said. **\- SMM** ## Alonso criticism emphatically rejected Fernando Alonso doubled down on his post-Austin criticisms about the lack of driving quality in the lower reaches of the Formula 1 grid, but he has not found many allies in the paddock. Several days after his annoyance at his clash with Alex Albon at Turn 1 of the United States Grand Prix, Alonso said in Mexico on Thursday he still did not understand what the Williams driver was trying to achieve. And he further questioned why there were so many incidents taking place at the back. “I don't feel that all the incidents in lap one, all the touches, all the front wings that fly around - all these kinds of things are not necessary,” he said. But his ongoing strong opinion about the matter was not one shared by his rivals, who seemed universal in their belief that, while things were more fraught in the fight at the back, that was not the result of it being down to a lack of quality. Albon said “it’s not nice” to hear someone like Alonso criticise him but he felt the standard of drivers at the back is “strong.” Team-mate Sainz reckoned that issues at the back were more down to dirty air, a bigger concertina effect and the fact there was much less to lose – so perhaps risk taking was more frequent. Alpine’s Pierre Gasly shared the opinion of many of his contemporaries that the standard of drivers in F1 had improved a lot compared to where it was several years ago. “I've seen some wilder driving approaches when I joined compared to what I see now,” he said. **– Jonathan Noble** ## Major Audi engine reinforcement Inherent engine architecture weaknesses, like a big turbocharger, have long since doomed Audi to a limited first year on track for its new works team in F1 - but its work for the future has had a big boost this week. Audi’s recruited the former managing director of Mercedes’ F1 engine programme, Thomas Fuhr, as CEO of the engine project in Neuburg. In his time at Mercedes High Performance Powertains, where he preceded Andy Cowell, Fuhr was credited with laying the foundations for the manufacturer’s mighty start to the 2014 engine rules. His arrival at Audi comes too late to have a meaningful impact on the short-term and it may be that his priority is all about the next set of rules coming a few years down the line. If Fuhr can have anything like the impact he did at his last major German manufacturer, it will prove to be a very important signing in Audi’s story - and his arrival has inevitably been backed by its drivers. “He has an incredible CV,” said Gabriel Bortoleto. “I think he will be working with some very good people who have been in Neuburg for many years now. And he will be there to support and to lead. “All the directions, I think, have already been made and put there for us to follow for the next years. And he will be there daily, because Mattia \[Binotto\] cannot be in Neuburg and in Hinwil at the same time. It’s definitely not an easy task. “Having someone there to support, to ensure that the vision is being put in place, and to support the other guys who have already been working on the project for many years is going to be extremely important.” **\- SMM** ## Even Ocon’s strongest 2026 suit isn’t helping much It’s tough to be Esteban Ocon right now. He’s driving for a team that doesn’t want him anymore, there’s no sign of an alternative seat on the F1 grid for next year, and no one really feels sorry for him except his mate Lance Stroll and, it would seem, Lewis Hamilton - who Ocon confirms made an effort to talk with him in Austin. And Ocon feels last Sunday’s COTA race was emblematic of how many of his 2026 races have gone: a mega start and first lap, followed by a regression thanks to a lack of pace and tyre management he feels is inherent to the car underneath him. “Unfortunately, this is what happens most of the time - we have mega starts, we got good first couple of laps always, we have good fights, the deployment is something that we manage super well, and we plan in advance all the strategies that we do to know where we are going to overtake and where we are going to have a chance,” Ocon explained in Mexico. “We are having the best starts of the grid and the best lap ones. And it's a strength of ours since last year, but it would be nice to be able to keep these positions at the end. “It's nice to do the show in the beginning and being in front, but we can't hold it. And that's what we need to work on.” Ocon says he has paid particular attention to the start procedures at Haas since he arrived for 2025, carrying over and building on work he did in this area with Alpine/Renault. “Basically what I do with my team is that I point out exactly where I think we are going to be good at passing people - and then we compare to other cars, what are their strong points, what are their weak points,” Ocon said. “The start is something that I've implemented to this team since I arrived. The steering wheel, for example, is something I've talked about a lot in ’25\. It's something that I've carried over in ’26\. “There are some things that I did carry over from Alpine, definitely, but we've improved with what I took over. We went one step further in improving all of these things. It’s not only the hardware, it's also all the maps that we put in. “And I'm quite good in planning in advance where I know I can pass people at the start. I’m happy with that, but once again, it doesn't pay off. So it's not really worth it, is it?” - **BA**