Why Mexico was a bad race for Hamilton

Lewis Hamilton doesn't need reminding about the impact circumstances outside his control can have on his world championship hopes. While his imperious victory from pole position in the Mexican Grand Prix couldn't have been more different than the disastrous engine failure he suffered while dominating in Malaysia four weeks earlier, once again serendipity was against him, just in a more subtle way.

In the build-up to the race, Hamilton was asked for an explanation of Nico Rosberg's form this year. Perhaps there was something different about his team-mate that shifted the balance in their previously one-sided competitive relationship.

"Nope," shot back Hamilton. "But I've had a lot of failures, that's the only difference."

Rosberg came close to failure of a sort, in fact of several sorts, in Mexico. And there's a warning there for Hamilton. Perhaps there is a difference in the championship leader now, as the Rosberg even of a few months ago might have allowed those opportunities to lead to an error. But this time he stood firm.

What if Rosberg had not dug deep and produced his first truly convincing lap of the weekend on the second run in Q3 to jump ahead of the two Red Bulls and qualify second to Hamilton? What if Rosberg had been hit a little bit harder when wheelbanging with Max Verstappen through Turn 1? What if Rosberg had been passed by the Dutchman later in the race and dropped to third? What if the Ferraris had made good on their practice promise in qualifying and been in a position to get involved in the battle for second?

Any of those scenarios could have helped Hamilton on a day that, ultimately, didn't do him as much good in the world championship fight as it might have. For Rosberg, finishing second behind Hamilton is still good enough - in fact, with two races to go he can even take the hit of a third place in one of those grands prix. What, Hamilton might ask himself, does he have to do to cop a break?

It was a brake of a different kind that created the one criticism Hamilton had to answer after the race. On the run to the first corner, having initially repulsed the attack of Verstappen, who attempted to capitalise on the theoretical 12-metre advantage of starting on super-soft-compound Pirellis versus the softs both Mercedes drivers started on, Hamilton grabbed the front-right brake. A big lock-up ensued, and he torpedoed across the runoff area - rejoining at Turn 3 and with the lead intact.

Hamilton blamed a glazed front-right brake disc for this, claiming he had 500C in the front-left brake, and a maximum of 200C on the other side of the axle. Given the lead advantage he then had, there were several who were surprised he escaped not only without a penalty, but also without the stewards even looking at it. And, as Nico Hulkenberg, who had a box seat for the incident, said "if you have a glazed brake then it will be glazed for the rest of the race, so I'm surprised how he still won it..."

For the only time during the whole weekend, Rosberg saw his chance to seize the initiative. But with Hamilton easing off the brake, protecting the tyre and preventing having to make the first-lap pitstop that a bigger flatspot would have demanded, it wasn't to be.

"I was excited at that point in time because I thought 'OK, I've got him'," said Rosberg. "That was some pretty late braking there. But he floored it through the grass and that's that. Again, that's not for me to judge."

The inference is that Rosberg definitely judged that to be worthy of a penalty, but you can't blame Hamilton for taking that slice of fortune. Conversely, given Rosberg and Verstappen were having their own wheelbanging moment behind him, it was probably for the best that the race did not get distorted by such a penalty. Hamilton, of course, gave the suggestion of a penalty short shrift.

"I had a complete flat-spotted tyre, so that definitely wasn't an advantage," said Hamilton. "I was still in the lead going in, so I was in the lead coming out."

Hamilton and Mercedes had a difficult decision, for what team boss Toto Wolff described as "scary vibrations metrics" suggested the flatspot of the front-right Pirelli might be too severe. The championship situation led to the gamble being taken to leave Hamilton out, and it paid off. As for Rosberg, he was more concerned about the after-effects of the collision with Verstappen.

"He went over the limit, locked up the front tyre, ran wide and shoved me off the track," said Rosberg. "It doesn't look that big on TV, but feeling-wise it was a massive impact. I thought 'OK, my car is done'. My steering actually had a bit of an offset after that, but penalty or not... that's not for me to judge."

Again, the meaning is clear. But even before the steering damage Rosberg was only ever going to be racing for second. After all, Hamilton had a clear pace advantage in his back pocket, so much so that the 0.254-second gap in qualifying arguably flattered his team-mate, and when things got going again after the safety car was deployed to clear up the Manor of Pascal Wehrlein, who had been unceremoniously ejected from the race when contact with Esteban Gutierrez's Haas at Turn 2 pitched him into Marcus Ericsson's Sauber, the race was reset.

And Rosberg had absolutely nothing to offer. By lap nine, the sixth after the safety car, Hamilton had a handy three-second cushion in his pocket. From there, things were very simple. By the time Hamilton pitted at the end of lap 17, to remove the softs and put on a set of mediums to run to the end, his advantage was 5.620s over Rosberg.

Hamilton rejoined fourth, with the Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel, both on softs, separating him from his team-mate. Here, Rosberg paid a double penalty for his lack of Hamiltonesque pace, for he had to stay out a little longer.

This wasn't some chancer's attempt to stay and somehow pull a gap over Hamilton, for that wasn't possible. Instead it was about pulling enough of a gap to be sure he would emerge from the pits clear of the Williams of Valtteri Bottas and the Red Bull of Daniel Ricciardo, the latter having opted to pit under the safety car at the end of the first lap and switch to mediums.

When Rosberg did pit at the end of lap 20 of 71 (inevitably, Hamilton had posted what was then the fastest lap of the race on his fresh mediums), he re-emerged a further second behind Hamilton. And, crucially, he was only three seconds ahead of Ricciardo.

To all intents and purposes, Hamilton was gone - at least, he was once illusory leader Vettel had finished his extra-long first stint on softs, which he justifiably extended unilaterally from the cockpit against the instructions from the pitwall. Mercedes held firm on its one-stop-strategy plan, facilitated by the negligible wear and thermal degradation of the medium Pirellis. But while Hamilton cruised to victory, Rosberg had some problems to deal with.

Red Bull added to these problems dramatically by making Ricciardo cede what became third place when Vettel pitted to Verstappen, who had medium tyres 11 laps fresher. It took a long time, almost 30 laps, for Verstappen to close that three second gap. But with 21 laps to go, he was in DRS range of Rosberg for the first time and wasn't going to miss out on the opportunity presented by the Mercedes driver locking up while shaping up to lap Daniil Kvyat's Toro Rosso into Turn 1.

Rosberg went deep, also compromising his entry to the Turn 2/3 left/right chicane, and that meant Verstappen had a run in the second DRS zone to the Turn 4 left-hander. The ever-aggressive Dutchman broke left to dive up the inside, but left it too late, locking up, sliding beyond Rosberg and running deep off the track.

Verstappen's hold on second place lasted all of two seconds and Rosberg suddenly found himself with a 2.5s advantage. What's more, Verstappen subsequently clouted a kerb and shed a few front wing parts, which effectively meant the battle for second was over. Rosberg had secured the second place he needed.

Without that break, Rosberg could easily have become embroiled in the contentious battle for third that enlivened the closing stages of the race. Vettel, who also might have been in a stronger position in this fight had he not spent the first 14 laps of the race wedged under the rear wing of Felipe Massa's Williams, had a 20-lap tyre life advantage over Verstappen and was coming into play.

With fourth-placed Ricciardo opting to pit at the end of lap 50 to take on softs, which would bring him into the podium hunt in the closing laps, Vettel was in fourth place and 5.7s behind Verstappen. That gap rose to 6.4s by the end of lap 56, when Vettel started his attack. Over the next 11 laps, Vettel painstakingly hauled himself into DRS range, with an average lap time gain of 0.137s - this was good, old-fashioned grand prix racing, decided by a matter of a tenth or two here and there each lap.

With four laps to go, Vettel was within DRS range for the first time and closed rapidly on Verstappen on the run to Turn 1. Verstappen defended, locked up and charged across the grass, holding onto third. However, when it was time for the podium ceremony, Verstappen was hauled out of the room reserved for the top three, having received a five-second penalty that dropped him to fifth at that point.

"It is pretty similar to what happened on lap one," said Verstappen of the penalty. "Lewis ran off, he gained a massive advantage. Nico also went off in Turn 1 when we touched and he also gained an advantage. I didn't even gain an advantage, I was still ahead on braking and when I came back on the track I was the same length in front. It's ridiculous."

He was initially told, via the radio, to let Vettel past - although Red Bull team principal Christian Horner subsequently claimed an unbroadcast message followed that up telling Verstappen to hang fire on doing so.

This makes more sense than the idea Verstappen deliberately ignored the order, as it had the benefit of backing Vettel up into Ricciardo, who was charging on soft rubber and circulating over a second a lap faster than Vettel.

On the penultimate lap, with Vettel still furious at Verstappen, Ricciardo had a look up the inside of the Ferrari into Turn 4. Vettel moved left in the braking zone - contrary to the rule clarification explicitly prohibiting this issued at the United States GP a week earlier - and Ricciardo did a stunning job to avoid torpedoing the Ferrari.

Both survived, but the shenanigans of the final four laps served to turn the original finishing order - Verstappen, Vettel, Ricciardo - on its head.

After Verstappen's penalty, Vettel, who stood on the podium, was given a 10s penalty for moving in the braking area. The final result was Ricciardo third, Verstappen fourth, Vettel fifth.

Cue Ferrari fury, with team principal Maurizio Arrivabene blaming the loss of the third place on "bureaucracy". A few chairs went flying in the Ferrari hospitality unit as a result of this decision; such was the dismay of certain team members...

Fortunately for Rosberg, he was well clear of this madness, crossing the line just over eight seconds behind Hamilton and eight clear of Verstappen. He'd dodged the bullets, escaped the scrapes and banked the points he needed on a weekend where Hamilton reigned supreme.

"It was not really damage limitation," said Rosberg. "I was going for the win, it didn't work out. Lewis did a great job; he was a little bit faster all weekend. I accept it. It's OK."

Hamilton's joy at a 51st F1 victory cannot fail but be tempered by Rosberg avoiding the pitfalls to take second. As he said, "Nico is doing a great job to pull in the position that he has to finish" - and time is running out for the kinds of problems Hamilton needs Rosberg to have if he's to take a fourth world championship.