Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez
Mexico City Grand Prix
Is the Mexico City Grand Prix Good for Racing?
Yes, for the first few corners of every lap. Pole sits 830m from the first braking point, so the slipstream has time to work, and in 2025 four cars reached the Moisés Solana complex fighting for the lead. F1 counted 91 overtakes in the 2024 race, and the stop for Turn 4 gives a second go on the same lap.
The rest is far harder. The lap on the right spends just 49% of its time at full throttle and brakes 10 times in 4.304km, mostly for tight, slippery corners where a following car loses grip.
Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez
Strategy Factors
2025 Mexico City Grand Prix
What to Look Out for at the Mexico City Grand Prix
Neutralizations shape this race more than raw pace. The Virtual Safety Car appeared in 71% of the seven Grands Prix before 2025 and a full Safety Car in 43%, and with a green-flag stop costing about 21.9s, teams wait for those cheaper windows.
The 2025 finish showed how that plays out. A late VSC froze Oscar Piastri behind Oliver Bearman, who kept a career-best fourth for Haas, while Charles Leclerc held second by 0.725s from Max Verstappen. Keep an eye on cooling too, since the thin air more than 2,200m up carries heat away less well than at sea level.
Current circuit length, lap count, race distance and the 1:17.774 race lap record.
The 2025 start, the late VSC that held Piastri behind Bearman and the championship lead change.
Turn 1 and Turn 4 as the two heavy braking zones, the Foro Sol section and altitude effects.
Mexico City Grand Prix Tire Strategy
The 2025 top 10 split evenly between one and two stops, and none of them used the C2 hard that Pirelli brought as a durable fallback. Lando Norris won on a single stop, running 34 laps on the C5 soft before 37 on the C4 medium.
Max Verstappen reversed that order from fifth on the grid, going 37 laps on mediums and finishing on softs, and Gabriel Bortoleto copied him into the points. The two-stoppers ran soft, medium, soft in near-equal thirds, and Oliver Bearman made that plan work best by finishing fourth.
Pit loss, the seven-race Safety Car sample, altitude notes and Pirelli's reasoning for the 2025 compounds.
Stint lengths and compounds for the top 10 finishers of the 2025 race, used in the chart.
Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez Sector by Sector and Corner by Corner
The speeds, gears and braking points below are from Lando Norris‘s 1:15.586 pole lap in 2025 qualifying. He was at full throttle for 49% of the lap and spent 14.5 seconds on the brakes across 10 braking zones. His top speed was 351 km/h on the main straight, and the slowest point was 68 km/h at Turn 13, inside the stadium.
FastF1 timing data for Lando Norris's 1:15.586 pole lap, used for the speeds, gears, braking points and sector figures
Turn 1 deceleration and pedal load, and Brembo's rating of it as the hardest stop
Tire temperatures dropping on the two long straights, and the low-grip surface that rubbers in
The Monaco wing and Monza downforce quote, the Foro Sol stadium and the Nigel Mansell corner name
History of the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez
Formula 1 has raced here in three spells, 1963 to 1970, 1986 to 1992 and 2015 onward. The name honors the brothers Ricardo and Pedro Rodríguez, and today’s lap runs through a baseball stadium.
Opening in 1959, Ricardo Rodríguez's 1962 accident, the 1970 crowd, the renaming and the 2002 stadium section.
Corner names, the 1.2km front straight, the altitude figure and the 2015 return.
How Much Does the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez Cost?
No verified cost has been published for building the circuit in 1959 or for the rebuild that brought F1 back in 2015. The hosting fee is a reported $30m a year, an estimate F1 has never confirmed. The federal government paid for the race from 2015 to 2019, and since 2020 the fee has gone through a Mexico City trust funded by private investment. The current deal runs to 2028.
How Much Is the Mexico City Grand Prix Hosting Fee?
F1 hasn't published it. RacingNews365 put Mexico's fee at $30m a year in February 2023 after talking to promoters, F1 and teams, and Speedcafe's 2024 estimates gave the same figure, while RacingNews365's undated contracts page lists $25m. The federal government funded the race until the 2019 renewal, when then-mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said the deal used a model "in which public resources are not used", with CIE as promoter. The 2022 renewal announcement claimed more than $2.443bn of economic activity from 2015 to 2021. The three-year extension announced in April 2025 runs to 2028, and its terms weren't disclosed.
The $30m fee estimate for Mexico in 2023
The $30m fee estimate for Mexico City in 2024
The lower $25m fee listing
Federal funding before 2020, the privately funded Mexico City trust and the Sheinbaum quote
CIE as promoter and the claimed $2.443bn of economic activity from 2015 to 2021
The three-year extension to 2028 announced in April 2025
The deal running to at least 2028
How Much Are Mexico City Grand Prix Tickets?
Every ticket covers all three days, and the cheapest is a grandstand seat. Grada 2A on the main straight costs MXN3,900 ($220), so the cheapest ticket and the cheapest grandstand are the same. The top regular grandstands are Grada 1 and Grada 2 over the grid and pits at MXN30,500 ($1,723), and hospitality starts at MXN25,000 ($1,413) in Box Oro Sur. That makes Mexico City the 9th cheapest of the 23 races in our ticket price table.
Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez and Mexico City Grand Prix Questions
Mexico City sits more than 2,200m above sea level, and the thin air cuts the downforce any wing can produce. Teams fit large wings to win some of it back and still run with less grip than they’d have at sea level. The same thin air cuts drag, which is how the 2025 pole lap still reached 351km/h.
At the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez the Foro Sol section turns a fast lap into a slow one. Turn 12 leads into a run of tight corners inside the old baseball stadium, where following is hard and passing rarely works, but the exit onto the main straight still sets up the next lap’s attack.
Graining in Mexico City comes from the car sliding. The altitude strips away downforce and the surface offers little grip, so the rubber skates across the track and tears at its surface. Pirelli’s 2025 answer was a softer pair, the C4 and C5, with the C2 hard held back as insurance.
The race lap record at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez is 1:17.774, set by Valtteri Bottas in 2021. George Russell’s fastest lap in the 2025 race was 1:20.052, well short of it, and Lando Norris’s 1:15.586 pole doesn’t count because only race laps qualify.
The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez honors Ricardo and Pedro Rodríguez, Mexico’s racing brothers. The circuit first commemorated Ricardo, who was killed in practice at the Peraltada in 1962, and it took both names in 1972 after Pedro died the year before. Hermanos simply means brothers.
The Mexico City Grand Prix pays a reported $30m a year to host the race, although F1 has never confirmed the figure and one listing puts it at $25m. Promoter CIE pays through a Mexico City trust funded by private investment, and the current deal runs until 2028.
Not since the 2019 renewal took effect in 2020, according to Mexico City. The federal government paid for the race from 2015 to 2019. The new deal moved the fee into a city trust funded by private investment, and then-mayor Claudia Sheinbaum said the model meant public resources were not used.
