One week after Lewis Hamilton clinched his third world championship title with a victory at the 2015 USA Grand Prix in Austin, Texas, his Mercedes teammate, Nico Rosberg ran away with a comfortable victory at the 2015 Mexican Grand Prix in Mexico City. Rosberg was the pole-sitter and led start-to-finish as Hamilton came in second in an all-too-familiar Mercedes 1-2 finish. Third place was claimed by Williams’ Valtteri Bottas.
The starting grid placed the two Mercedes of Rosberg and Hamilton in the first row and both took off from there, not to be seen by the rest of the field until pit stops and safety car appearances. Ferrari’s Sebastian Vettel, sitting third in the overall season standings, and the only other driver able to muster consistent challenges to the Mercedes, had his premium second row starting grid positioning ruined on the first lap when Red Bull’s Daniel Ricciardo hit him on a corner and caused a tire puncture which essentially ended Vettel’s race and he spent the majority of the remainder of it trying to play catch-up until ultimately crashing out in frustration in Lap 53.
Bottas took advantage of the lack of Vettel behind the Mercedes to claim the final podium position but not after first doing a little hitting of his own by taking out Vettel’s teammate, Kimi Raikkonen, on Lap 23 – which was seen as retaliation for a similar hit Raikkonen put on Bottas at last month’s 2015 Russian Grand Prix.
Hamilton pads his title-winning total with 338 points while Rosberg reclaims second from Vettel with 272 points and Vettel remains 251 points in third.
The 2015 Formula One season continues with the Brazilian Grand Prix at Interlagos at 8 a.m. [PDT] on NBCSN on November 15, 2015.
2015 Mexican Grand Prix – 71 laps – 190 miles Points Time/Lag Avg. mph
1 Nico Rosberg – Mercedes 25 1:42:35.038 178.597
2 Lewis Hamilton – Mercedes 18 +1.954 Sec 178.54
3 Valtteri Bottas – Williams 15 +14.592 Sec 178.175
4 Daniil Kvyat – Red Bull 12 +16.572 Sec 178.117
5 Daniel Ricciardo – Red Bull 10 +19.682 Sec 178.028
6 Felipe Massa – Williams 8 +21.493 Sec 177.976
7 Nico Hulkenberg – Force India 6 +25.860 Sec 177.85
8 Sergio Perez – Force India 4 +34.343 Sec 177.606
9 Max Verstappen – Toro Rosso 2 +35.229 Sec 177.581
10 Romain Grosjean – Lotus 1 +37.934 Sec 177.503
11 Pastor Maldonado – Lotus 0 +38.538 Sec 177.486
12 Marcus Ericsson – Sauber 0 +40.180 Sec 177.439
13 Carlos Sainz Jr. – Toro Rosso 0 +48.772 Sec 177.193
14 Jenson Button – McLaren 0 +49.214 Sec 177.18
15 Alexander Rossi – Marussia 0 – 173.257
16 Will Stevens – Marussia 0 – 172.966
17 Felipe Nasr – Sauber 0 – 175.63
18 Sebastian Vettel – Ferrari 0 – 180.884
19 Kimi Raikkonen – Ferrari 0 – 179.059
20 Fernando Alonso – McLaren 0 – 124.235