The Mexican GP will also be a flop – three more races: Alfa-Sauber: 9th place is a reality in 2023!

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Just like in Budapest, they could not take advantage of the two starting positions from the first five rows in Mexico. In Hungary, Zhou started fifth and finished 16th. Bottas raced away from seventh position and finished twelfth. Embarrassingly, we were out of the points after just the first round.

Points disappear quickly

In Mexico, the Hinwil duo did not want to give up their good starting positions in the first round, as in Budapest. When the duo woke up, the train to the points had long since left. The two drivers from the fifth row finished in 14th and 15th place. With four failures!

After the good Saturday, chief engineer Xevi Pujolar said. “Our C43 is very good in slow corners and at high temperatures.” So the conditions were good on race day. Nevertheless, the Finn and the Chinese remained colorless throughout the race.

“We will not finish last!”

On the other hand, designated Alpha Tauri team boss Peter Bayer (with a new team name in 2024) has already fulfilled his prediction from Singapore: “We won’t be the last!”

And with eleven points from the last two races, Tsunoda (the hero from Austin) and Ricciardo (the man of the race in Mexico) are already from eighth place in the World Championship. Equal points with Alfa-Sauber, which, however, achieves worse results.

A year ago, the team from the Zurich Oberland managed to finish sixth at the World Championship with the Aston Martin-Mercedes team (55), with the same number of points, because Bottas (5th in Imola) had the better individual result than the green team.

Albon: “We come seventh!”

Before the fourth to last Grand Prix, the fast Thai Alex Albon had trumpeted: “7th place in the World Championship is ours at Williams!” In Mexico, Formula 1’s third oldest team (after Ferrari and McLaren) has made a big leap in this direction.

Thanks to Albon’s ninth place, Williams increased his points tally to 28 – this cushion should be extended over the distance in Brazil, Las Vegas and Abu Dhabi.

Haas doesn’t move – Bottas punished

And Alfa-Sauber? It would be a surprise if we can get rid of this ninth place in the World Cup. Alpha Tauri waits at the front and is getting stronger and stronger, and Haas-Ferrari (four points behind) poses little threat from the back.

After the good start to the season (eight points from the first five races), the American team is almost just crawling on the ground. And in Mexico, where Hülkenberg only fell outside the World Cup points four rounds before the end, the team even had to add the total loss of Magnussen to their negative balance after a suspension break. Fortunately, Alfa-Sauber was spared a major crash in 2023. However, Bottas does not escape unscathed in Mexico either.

After the race, the Finn received a five-second penalty for a collision with Stroll (to be added to the final time) and also received two penalty points. For the team’s internal rankings this meant: Bottas dropped to 15th place behind Zhou in Mexico.

Source : Blick