Article by Chanelle Yehia
The 2026 Mexico City Grand Prix was, in a word, eventful. The race saw the rise of the youngest-ever F1 world champion, a Ferrari “civil war”, two major crashes, and a red flag. Yet at the same time, the weekend saw very little overtaking action, with very few position changes among the frontrunners.
After watching such an energetic (yet also frustrating) weekend, I couldn’t help but wonder: Why Mexico? What about this track creates such a perfect storm for suspense and excitement? And why did overtaking seem so difficult for drivers?
Thin air
The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez sits at an altitude of approximately 2238 to 2285 meters above sea level, giving it the highest elevation out of any F1 track. Due to this extreme altitude, the air is much thinner; in fact, there is a roughly 20% reduction in air density compared to other circuits at sea level. As such, this correlates to a 20% decrease in downforce. This is because when there are fewer air particles passing through a car’s wings and underneath its floor, there is less pressure pushing down on the car to keep it “suctioned” to the track.
Downforce is crucial for maintaining close following and overtaking in the sport. As an F1 car travels at high speeds, it generates a trail/wake of turbulent air behind it. When another car follows closely through turns or corners, the following car is forced to drive directly in this turbulent wake. As such, the downforce and grip of the following car is negatively affected.
This entire phenomenon is widely known as the wake effect. Because all the cars have limited downforce at the Mexico circuit, the negative impacts of the wake effect are exacerbated for all drivers. In fact, Sergio Perez has highlighted that when driving at this circuit, “…the thing you really have to concentrate on is minimizing the sliding. The downforce is very low, so that’s difficult…”
To combat this issue, many teams ran Monaco-style spec packages with larger wings to produce more downforce. However, due to the elevation, these modifications only produced a Monza-level of downforce.
Too hot to handle
The lack of air density at the Mexico City circuit also means there are fewer air particles available for the cars’ cooling systems. As such, it is significantly more difficult to manage the temperature of brakes, electrical components, and power units.
In response to this challenge, F1 teams brought various adaptations to their cars. For instance, Red Bull, Ferrari, and McLaren included additional engine cover cooling louvres, which look like large, accordion-like incisions in the side of the car.
Secret speed limit
This year, the new 2026 regulations discontinued the use of DRS and instead introduced overtake mode, where a driver that is within 1 second of the car in front gains an extra 0.5 MJ energy boost. In order to accommodate the energy required for overtake mode, cars without overtake mode activated get a restricted amount of energy deployment. This rule essentially enforces a hidden speed limit; once a driver exceeds 337 km/h, each additional km/h gained causes the driver to lose 20kW in energy deployment.
While this “energy clipping” was never a detrimental problem at previous races, Mexico’s track layout significantly intensified its impact. Due to the circuit design, drivers would often gain significant speed leading up to the straights. This meant that drivers were already hitting the invisible speed limit of 337 km/h at the beginning of the long straightaways. As they drove on, they only went faster. By the time drivers’ had opportunities to overtake at the end of the straights, they had lost too much energy to successfully execute the maneuver.
This largely prevented overtakes during the race, and was an especially frustrating problem for Lewis Hamilton and Lando Norris, who failed numerous overtaking attempts on Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc respectively. In the cooldown room after the race, Hamilton criticized the deployment issues, saying “It’s so stupid, the clipping… I don’t understand why… it’s like they [FIA] have got no sense.”
Later, in the post-race press conference, Hamilton noted that “…you probably didn’t see much overtaking, unfortunately, because of that.” This clipping phenomenon is likely one of the key reasons behind the lack of overtakes in Mexico this year. Thankfully, these rules regarding the invisible speed limit and clipped energy deployment have been removed from the 2027 regulations, and will no longer be a problem next season.
The Mexico City Grand Prix is certainly a distinctive track; its extreme elevation and circuit geometry pose unique problems for drivers, engineers, and F1 policymakers alike. Together, this culminates into the captivating and cutting-edge race weekend enjoyed by fans around the world.
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