Food Investigation Authority: Mexican GP – Goin' Up, Goin' Down

With the 2022 F1 championship now representing a deflated, battered and bruised piñata (not in the rumoured shape of Ted Kravitz though), and an insatiable, almost maniacal Max Verstappen still stood over it with a stick labelled ‘RB18’, you might be forgiven for thinking the season was already over.

It might as well be – the now-double champion Dutchman deservedly took the wins-in-a-season record from a great height, Ferrari appeared to have almost given up having turned its engines down, and Mercedes’s flying frankfurter was still-too draggy at a location with 25% thinner air.

It looked at one point as if Toto Wolff was about to tell Sky’s Simon Lazenby the Silver Arrows would have had an easy 1-2 had the race been run in space, such are his attempts to lift morale, but he wisely moved on to waxing lyrical about the clothing line from F1’s biggest forced grin.

Luckily this column (unlike the RIC3 Rodeo Party Shirt) doesn’t cost £123 and stands up fairly well to several spin drys, so, by all means, read on.

 

Catering budgets

Apparently £1.4m of Red Bull’s cost cap overspend came from its catering budget.

It was, tragically, too late to send back the 7,000 tacos which had been ordered in anticipated celebration of national hero Sergio Perez’s guaranteed third place, or the new comedy sombreros which had been ordered for the Three Musketeers’ latest corporate bonding holiday.

Rumours are unconfirmed that the reduction in windtunnel time actually relates to the aerodynamic efficiency of Milton Keynes’s croissants, not the actual cars. Stringent.

 

Dire Drome

After much research (watching seven horrifically boring grands prix), it’s now impossible not to conclude that Magdalena Mixuca AKA Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez is actually…rubbish. At least for F1 cars.

The fevered love for Checo, general party atmosphere and beautiful leafy setting (hyped up by us the media of course) is all centred around a track which produces dire racing.

Pointless chicanes make fiddly what used to be a pleasingly straightforward parkland sweep, keeping the cars at arm’s length from one another.

The one properly good corner, the Peraltada, has been butchered to make the end of lap stadium section look like the parade for a semi-benevolent Central American dictator.

If this fearsome turn was restored and the chicanes gotten rid off, the racing could actually be half decent. Might be time to give Jarno Zafelli a call.

 

Food Investigation Authority

After delaying several times, the FIA actually manages to get its act together, then hands out a soggy quesadilla of a $7m fine to the world’s biggest energy drink company, not even included in next year’s budget cap.

Red Bull will no doubt be quivering in its boots at the 10% reduction in aerodynamic testing too, for a car which is now far and away the class of the field – devastating.

 

Bulls boycott

Red Bull features a lot in this column, but for a team which almost feeds off controversy, it seems inevitable at times.

Verstappen – the driver who prompted the Mongolian government to request UN intervention for twice using racist language on team radio for which he refused to publicly apologise – has now decided that’s it, Ted Kravitz has gone too far!

F1’s most authoritative pair of shorts said that Hamilton had been “robbed” of last year’s championship – might sound pretty impartial, but the reality is the cock-up was so great that race director Michael Masi got sent to Aussie V8 Supercar Siberia for attempting to engineer a “motor race”, so it is technically true and, you could argue, not biased at all.

It would in fact be more biased, one might suggest, to say that everything was all fine and dandy.

Now Max and the cans are all boycotting Sky F1 “indefinitely”. You have to hand it to those Red Bull bods, they sure are principled.

TED KRAVITZ IS SO REAL pic.twitter.com/CK87qHrGdq

— out of context Toto Wolff (@askolatte) October 23, 2022

 

Goin’ Up

One more time

Quite good.

It's official: The Mariachi-style F1 Theme is a BOP 😍#MexicoGP #F1 pic.twitter.com/31gUYoZNEg

— Formula 1 (@F1) October 29, 2022

 

Two-time Terminator

Verstappen’s devastating transformation from rapid yet petulant wild child to F1’s answer to the Terminator has to be admired, and he has been justly rewarded with his record-breaking 14th win in a season.

Let’s commemorate it with this soppy tweet:

That little kid just broke his record. pic.twitter.com/0dTs5L4vNA

— ¹ ˣ ¹¹ CHAMPIONS 🏆 (@formulakimmich) October 30, 2022

 

Need a lift?

It might make the racing miserable, but at least Autodromo’s podium section features F1’s equivalent of a dumb waiter, hoisting the winner’s car aloft like some kind of sacrificial offering to the racing gods.

No doubt Wolff and Binotto would likely like to see the RB18 included in some kind of grand prix pyre, but we’ll leave it there.

 

Bring on the boos

It might not fit F1’s new de-cigged, de-grid girled (though Mexico tried its best) image, but let’s face it: partisan crowds – what’s not to love?

 

Retro Ricciardo

How tasteful of ‘DRIC’ to do a tribute act to the artist formerly known as Daniel Ricciardo as he prepares to step into Nico Hülkenberg’s Alpinestars as F1’s most overpaid wallflower – he even had the hand actions to match.

He literally did a finger gun to the car in front that he was about to overtake I’m 💀 pic.twitter.com/oyFc9VLe34

— chlo (@formulachlo) October 31, 2022

 

Ringing in the rightful changes

Bravo to Sky Sports F1, which prior to the GP once again broadcast its feature on the world’s first ethnic-minority race team, Force Indy, and its driver Myles Rowe.

Roger Penske’s IndyCar championship, in line with Force Indy founder Rod Reid, is pushing for real change in a racing ladder which also has the female-focused single-seater team Paretta Autosport too.

For all F1’s bluster, IndyCar is doing far more to initiate immediate change in motor sport diversity, and Sky has brilliantly shone a light on it in the last two weeks.