Lewis Hamilton didn't think he was on the right tyres in Mexico, but had to concede Max Verstappen was too fast anyway. 'I think the Red Bull was just clearly too fast today. Ultimately maybe they had the better tyre strategy.' F1 MexicoGP
Although it seemed that Mercedes was going to attempt to go long into the race on the mediums and switch to softs at the end, the team instead made the jump to hards with Hamilton before half-distance, with Russell following suit.
The pair could occasionally match the Red Bulls on pace, but the gambit of waiting for the medium tyres on Verstappen and Sergio Perez's cars to fade away did not work as tyre wear proved low throughout the race. "I was so close I think in that first stint," Hamilton said of his initial stint on the medium tyres,"but I think the Red Bull was just clearly too fast today. Ultimately maybe they had the better tyre strategy.
"I’m not sure [the hard] was the right tyre in the end. I thought we should have started on the soft, obviously we had the opposite tyre. "It was OK in the first stint, but the hard tyre was just offset. Congratulations to Max, it’s great to be up here and separate the two."