Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone in 2018, the season he clinched his fifth title in Mexico City. Photo: Jen_ross83 / Wikimedia Commons (CC BY 2.0)
On October 28, 2018, Lewis Hamilton finished fourth at the 2018 Mexican Grand Prix and became a five-time Formula 1 world champion with two races still to run. Max Verstappen won the race for Red Bull, Sebastian Vettel finished second for Ferrari, and the title was settled in a way nobody would have drawn up: by a driver who said afterwards he had a “horrible race.”
That mix, a champion crowned on a day he did not win and a race winner who never got near the title, is why Mexico City 2018 is worth remembering. It was the point where a long Mercedes–Ferrari fight stopped being a fight, and where Hamilton moved level with Juan Manuel Fangio on five championships.
The competitive context
The 2018 season had started as a real contest. Vettel led the championship by eight points at the halfway mark, and Ferrari had the quicker car at several circuits. Then it came apart. Vettel crashed out of the lead at Hockenheim, tangled with Hamilton on the opening lap at Monza, and failed to beat Hamilton in Singapore and Japan, both of which Hamilton won. By the time the paddock reached Mexico, Hamilton led Vettel by 70 points with 100 still available.
The arithmetic was simple. Hamilton needed seventh place or better if Vettel won. Anything lower, and the title fight would carry on to the United States or beyond. Mexico City was also a track where Mercedes had been vulnerable: at roughly 2,240 metres above sea level, the thin air robs downforce and strains cooling, and Red Bull had won there the year before with Verstappen.
What happened on race day
Daniel Ricciardo took pole position for Red Bull, with Verstappen alongside in second and Hamilton third. Ricciardo bogged down badly at the start and Verstappen went straight past into the lead. Hamilton had started well but could not keep Verstappen in sight for long, and he was the first of the front-runners to pit, stopping on lap 12 for supersofts after his ultrasofts wore badly.
That was the pattern of Hamilton’s afternoon. His Mercedes struggled to get its tyres to work, he fell back, and Vettel passed him for second on lap 39. Räikkönen ran a quiet race to third in the second Ferrari, and Hamilton could not get back past him. Ricciardo, who had recovered to run second, retired late with a hydraulics failure, his eighth retirement of the year, which moved Vettel up to second place. Verstappen won by about 17 seconds. Valtteri Bottas set the fastest lap, but he finished fifth, one lap down.
Hamilton’s fourth place was worth 12 points and lifted his total to 358. Vettel, with 294, could no longer catch him, since only 50 points remained. It was Hamilton’s fifth championship, following 2008, 2014, 2015 and 2017, and the second he had won in a row. Afterwards he called it “a very strange feeling,” which matched a title won on a day when he was never in contention for the victory.
Why Mexico 2018 mattered
For Hamilton, the result moved him past the clutch of four-time champions into territory occupied only by Fangio, with five, and Michael Schumacher, with seven. He finished the season on 408 points after 11 wins, 88 clear of Vettel, and Mercedes went on to take its fifth straight constructors’ championship in Brazil a fortnight later.
For Verstappen, it was a fifth career win, his second in succession in Mexico City, and the first time he had won twice at the same venue. He had never started a race from pole, which made the milestone unusual, and it confirmed the speed Red Bull had shown since mid-season. It also lands differently in hindsight: Ricciardo, who retired from the lead battle that day and said he could not see the point of the final two races, left Red Bull for Renault at the end of the year, leaving Verstappen as the team’s clear number one.
Ferrari took the opposite lesson. The team had a car good enough to fight for the title and let the lead slip through mistakes, with Vettel’s crash from the lead in Germany the clearest example. That reputation for squandering good seasons stuck to the team for years.
The lasting effect
Hamilton did not stop at five. He took a sixth title in 2019 and a seventh in 2020, equalling Schumacher’s record, and the milestone he reached in Mexico started the run that made that possible. We covered the next big step in his chase, his record-equalling win at the Nürburgring, in Hamilton Equals Schumacher’s 91 Wins at the 2020 Eifel Grand Prix.
Mexico City has stayed a place where seasons turn. The track’s history includes Gerhard Berger’s first win for Benetton in 1986, and this year’s race has its own title story, with Kimi Antonelli’s 123-point lead leaving 125 points to play for. If you like title deciders with an odd twist, see how Prost won the 1989 title at Suzuka after Senna won on the road, or Mansell’s tyre explosion in Adelaide handed the 1986 crown to Prost. For the other side of Hamilton’s era, there is also Horner’s account of the Lauda tip that took Hamilton to Mercedes.
Featured image: Lewis Hamilton at Silverstone, 2018. Photo: Jen_ross83 / Wikimedia Commons, licensed under CC BY 2.0.
About the Author
