Ferrari targets another strong result at 2,285-metre Mexico City Grand Prix

Round 19 of the Formula 1 World Championship takes Scuderia Ferrari HP to Mexico City and the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, where the team arrives off encouraging form and progress in recent races and is aiming for another solid team result. The circuit sits 2,285 metres above sea level, presenting atmospheric conditions not encountered at any other round: lower air density reduces drag and lets cars reach very high speeds on the long main straight, but it also reduces aerodynamic efficiency and downforce. The thinner air makes cooling the power unit and braking system more complicated. The track has an extremely long start-finish straight, one of the season's most demanding braking zones at its end, a middle section of varying-speed corners and a slower, more twisty final sector. It also runs through the Foro Sol stadium, where thousands of spectators create a unique atmosphere, while tyre management matters because the surface is not very abrasive, favouring strategies with relatively few pit stops, though overheating when following another car can affect pace and strategy.

Sebastian Navarro, Scuderia Ferrari HP Head of Composite Design, says Mexico City is the highest circuit on the F1 calendar at around 2,240 metres above sea level, where thinner air is less effective for cooling, generating downforce and engine performance. From a composites perspective, the team uses extreme cooling solutions, including specific bodywork configurations with additional louvres and cooling exits. Despite the long straight and high-speed sections, Ferrari tends to run very high-downforce packages closer to Monaco than Monza, because less dense air requires the aerodynamic configuration to generate the right level of downforce and grip while limiting the drag penalty. Navarro's grandfather was part of the original organising committee for the first Mexican Grand Prix and was an amateur racing driver, and Navarro has driven the circuit since he was a teenager. He left Mexico at 19 to study Automotive Engineering at Oxford Brookes University, spent years in Formula Student, began a two-week unpaid placement at Renault F1 one week before graduating that became an internship and then a full-time composite designer role, joined Ferrari in 2014 as a senior composite designer and is now Head of Composite Design leading engineers who design the vast majority of the car's composite components; he was born on 09.07.1985 in Mexico City and holds Mexican and Spanish nationality.