The wait has been too long, almost long as the pit straight at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez. One of the most charismatic, distinctive and atmospheric tracks in Formula 1 history is back on the schedule!
The Mexican Grand Prix has been on the Formula 1 World Championship schedule a total of 15 times in the past 52 years, divided into an eight-year stretch and a seven-year stretch with a 15-year lull in between. But the latest hiatus was longest of all. When the lights go out to start the 2015 Grand Premio de Mexico on November 1, it will have been well over 23 years since Nigel Mansell passed the checkered flag to clinch the Mexican GP as part of his dominant run to the 1992 World Championship.
To be blunt, the F1 calendar has been crying out for a track like this. Too many anonymous circuits have appeared on the calendar in the past couple decades, and although Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez has had to be brought in line with modern safety standards – for example, cutting out half of its unique but dangerous Peraltada corner, for example – there remain challenges within the track’s 2.747 miles that are unique to the Mexico City track. Of course, it’s almost impossible to judge beforehand but the new layout promises to create some great racing. With three long straights, each of them followed by two hard-braking zones, who needs DRS?
Originally called the Magdalena Mixhuca circuit, the track is based in south Mexico City, and therefore is 7,500 feet above sea level. This in itself has presented some interesting technical challenges over the decades. On the aero side, the air is thinner, which means the cars are therefore potentially faster in a straight line, but the wings produce less downforce, too. Given the 
length of the straights here, the tendency has always been to trim out and let the drivers wrestle the cars through the corners. This need to minimize wind resistance has always been exacerbated during Formula 1’s naturally aspirated eras, when you consider how starved of horsepower engines are at this altitude. Under the 1.5-liter regulations in F1 when the track held its first grand prix, back in 1962, the Coventry-Climax engines produced only 185hp at sea level; in Mexico City, it was more like 145. Not a very “F1” figure…and yet the cream still rose to the top.
That first Mexican Grand Prix, held in November ’62, was a non-championship event and notable absentees included BRM (including new World Champion Graham Hill), Porsche (including Dan Gurney), and the Ferrari squad. However, Ferrari’s local hero, 20-year-old Ricardo Rodriguez [ABOVE], had found a ride in Rob Walker Racing’s Lotus 24, as Walker continued searching for a driver who could replace his previous megastar, Stirling Moss, whose career was ended by a crash in April of that year. Elsewhere, the 
grid was filled with American talent who ventured south of the border and fastest of the U.S. drivers was one Roger Penske, who slotted his Lotus into sixth on the grid, between the Cooper of Bruce McLaren and the Brabham of already two-time World Champion Jack Brabham.
After just one day of practice, the local crowd was in mourning, having lost its favorite son. The talented and fearless Rodriguez had crashed to his death on the Peraltada, possibly as a result of suspension failure on the track’s notorious bumps (it’s built on an area prone to earthquakes). But the reasoning wasn’t important. What was sad is that there has been no Mexican driver before or since who possessed so much potential…other than his brother Pedro, of course. The track remains dedicated to these local stars to this day.
The ’62 race started unusually and confusingly as the pole-sitting Lotus of Jimmy Clark suffered a flat battery and had to be push-started by mechanics, and on lap 10 he was black-flagged as a result. Clark’s teammate Trevor Taylor [ABOVE] was doing a fine job running in third behind Brabham and McLaren, but he was called to the pits and handed over his car to the future World Champion. And now the spectators, rivals and timekeepers were presented with evidence of just how much time Clark had had in hand all weekend. With a minute deficit to Brabham, Clark started really extending himself, and with a fastest lap 2.5sec quicker than his pole position, he was back into the lead with more than 20 laps still to go and ran out an easy winner.
The following year, with the Mexican GP now serving as F1’s penultimate round, Clark was hardly less dominant, scoring the sixth of his seven championship wins that season and lapping everyone 
up to third place. In truth, ’64 should have gone the way of the quiet Scot, too [ABOVE]. However, an oil leak caused his engine to blow on the penultimate lap while leading, handing the win to Dan Gurney’s Brabham and the World Championship to John Surtees (Ferrari), [LEFT] who thus became the first driver to conquer the world of both motorcycle and auto racing.
Pleasing the local crowd was Pedro Rodriguez who scored his first World Championship point, with sixth place in the North American Racing Team-entered Ferrari 156. This was only Pedro’s third grand prix (he’d started and retired from the U.S. and Mexican Grands Prix the year before), and it set in motion a long list of top-six finishes at home for the local favorite.
Clark’s fourth straight Mexican pole in ’65 led only to disappointment when he posted first retirement in the race due to engine failure. This left the race open to an American 1-2, with Richie Ginther [BELOW] scoring the first ever F1 grand prix win for Honda in the final grand prix under the 1.5-liter regulations and Dan Gurney taking second for Brabham. Meanwhile, Rodriguez collided with Ferrari teammate Lorenzo Bandini three laps from the end, and was 
classified seventh.
Ginther was a star again in ’66, qualifying third and setting fastest lap, but the new 3-liter Honda V12 was at least matched by the Maserati V12 in the back of Surtees’ Cooper, and Big John’s brilliance did the rest. Surtees dominated from pole, lapped Ginther’s Honda and led home the Brabham Repcos of Jack Brabham and Denny Hulme.
This Brabham team pairing would repeat that result in ’67, but this time it had greater significance: third was enough to ensure New Zealander Hulme beat his team boss to the World Championship. Meanwhile the winner of the race was polesitter Jimmy Clark in the Lotus 49 [BELOW], who took the checkered flag almost 90seconds ahead of Black Jack, despite having to match his shifts very precisely to the Cosworth DFV’s revs after his clutch burnt out at the start.
That would be the 24th of Clark’s 25 grand prix wins. The following April he was killed in an F2 race in Germany, and his Lotus teammate Graham Hill stepped out of Jimmy’s shadow of genius to re-emerge as a title force. Jo Siffert (Walker Racing Lotus 49) and Chris Amon (Ferrari 312) were faster in qualifying in the title-decider in Mexico, but the race eventually distilled down to a fight between Hill and Jackie Stewart in the Tyrrell-run Matra MS10. When the French car’s Cosworth 
engine developed a fuel feed issue, Hill won by 75sec [RIGHT] over McLaren and took his second World Championship.
Back in fourth, Rodriguez [ABOVE] scored what would prove to be his best result at home (literally – he was born in Mexico City). Considering his BRM P133 was maybe only the sixth best car out there compared with the Lotuses, Ferraris, Brabhams, Matras and McLarens, it was a deeply impressive performance.
The Brabham team returned to its position of prominence in Mexico in ’69 with “Black Jack” taking the penultimate pole of his career and bright young teammate Jacky Ickx starting second. Yet it was the man who Ickx replaced, Denny Hulme, who drove to victory in the 
gorgeous works McLaren M7A, with Jacky chasing him all the way to the flag. [LEFT – Stewart leads Ickx, Brabham and Hulme.]
Ickx would have to wait only one year for his first Mexican win, heading a Ferrari 1-2 ahead of Clay Regazzoni in 1970. [BELOW – Ickx holds off Stewart and “Rega”.]
Unfortunately, the event was proving too popular and the 200,000-strong crowd was impossible to contain. Rodriguez had narrowly avoided a young child that ran onto the track, while Stewart had hit a stray dog. Basically, the worries over a fast track lined by spectators meant Mexico City disappeared from the F1 calendar.
In 1980 and ’81, CART Indy car raced at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Bobby Unser taking pole for both, Penske teammate Rick Mears winning both. But there would be a further five-year wait before F1 returned. And this time, there were no issues with crowd control – strong fences had been erected and armed guards with dogs were there to prevent overenthusiastic locals scaling the fences and spilling onto the track.
With the circuit modified to remove the long drag down to the hairpin at Turn 6, the lap reduced from 3.1 miles to 2.75. The drivers’ main complaints centered around the bumpiness of the track and its abrasive surface, but over the years it was precisely those qualities that helped make the
track so demanding. In ’86, championship contenders for Williams, Nelson Piquet and Nigel Mansell, made three and two stops respectively, and could finish only fourth and fifth, while their principal title rival Alain Prost was second after only one stop for fresh Goodyears. However, the super-hard Pirellis won this, as Gerhard Berger earned his and Benetton’s first ever F1 win after running non-stop.
It could have been another Benetton win the following year, as Thierry Boutsen’s Ford-powered B187 led in the early stages; and it could have been another Berger win, as his Ferrari was Boutsen’s main opposition. However, both cars failed, leaving the dominant Williams-Hondas to scoop the spoils. After the race was stopped at half-distance for a huge crash involving Derek Warwick’s Arrows (his suspension had been weakened by an early assault from Satoru Nakajima’s Lotus), Piquet took 
the lead on the road. But he had made such a mess of the first half of the race that Mansell only needed to keep his teammate vaguely in sight in order to clinch his sixth victory of the season on aggregate.
In 1988, no one could get near the McLaren-Honda MP4/4s, and while many predicted Ayrton Senna would demolish established McLaren driver Prost that year, Mexico City saw the Frenchman take his third win from the season’s opening four races. Alain led from start to finish, while Ayrton struggled to get the perfect balance of going fast while saving fuel and tires.
The team balance was majorly redressed in ’89, however, as a thoroughly demotivated Prost was no opposition to Senna [BOTTOM] who simply blitzed the opposition in the now normally-aspirated McLaren-Honda. The Ferraris failed, Riccardo Patrese finished second and Michele Alboreto scored 
the last podium of his career for the financially struggling Tyrrell team.
Senna would likely have won again in 1990, but a right-rear tire failure allowed Prost, now at Ferrari, to climb through from mid-grid and take the win after using his gentle touch and a perfect race setup to look after his tires. All the headlines were stolen by his Ferrari teammate, Mansell, however, after a bare-knuckle scrap for second with the McLaren of Berger that was only settled by the Briton driving around the outside of the Austrian into Peraltada on the penultimate lap!
Mansell was beaten to the top step of the podium by a teammate once more in 1991, this time – after his return to Williams – the evergreen Riccardo Patrese (ABOVE). The Italian, who’d also finished third here back in ’87 while driving for Brabham, beat Nigel to pole and although Nigel staged a stirring comeback drive in the late stages, Williams-Renault FW14 Red Five had to cede best to “White Six” at the checkered flag. As for Senna, he took an outpaced third – not a bad consolation considering his big shunt in practice (RIGHT).
The following year, however, Mansell’s confidence was back in the active suspension FW14B (ideal for Mexico’s bumps) and he dominated the event. Patrese ran him very close in qualifying, but had nothing for him on race day. Michael Schumacher’s year-old Benetton took third in only his seventh grand prix to score the first of the 155 F1 podiums of his career.
So only the classic teams have won Formula 1 races in Mexico City so far. Four went the way of Team Lotus (not to be confused with the current Lotus, which is merely on its fourth name-change since from the Renault-Benetton-Toleman team). But McLaren and Williams have three apiece, while Ferrari has two. In terms of engine manufacturers Honda has four to Renault’s two.
Our bet is that given its power advantage, Mercedes engines will surely have the edge this season to bring the three-pointed star its inaugural open-wheel win at the track (Sauber-Mercedes won two of the three World Sportscar Championship rounds held 1989-’91). But will M-B’s winner come from the works AMG team, Williams, Lotus or even Force India?
If you want to watch it in person and soak up the special carnival atmosphere you can only find south of the border, down Mexico way, click here.
[BELOW: Pedro Rodriguez heads for sixth in his final F1 Mexican GP in 1970, driving a BRM P153].
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