On 20 February 1992 Mexico city officials put out a smog alert due to the dangerous air pollution levels in the city. Alerts mandated restrictions on operating heavy motorized equipment. The Mexican Grand Prix committee had to delay work paving sections of the track.^[2]

The planned pre-qualifying session was again cancelled, as it had been in South Africa, where the Andrea Moda team was excluded from the event due to non-payment of the $100,000 guarantee required for new teams. With the guarantee now paid, FISA clarified that if Andrea Moda came to Mexico with two new cars that met the regulations, the team would be reinstated in the Championship.^[3] Therefore team owner Andrea Sassetti abandoned the C4B car with its Coloni origins, and brought forward the introduction of their new car, the Simtek-designed Andrea Moda S921, which was originally intended for the fourth round in Spain. The team brought two hastily-built S921s for Alex Caffi and Enrico Bertaggia, but the cars could not be made ready in time for pre-qualifying. So Sassetti withdrew his cars, citing "freight delays" as extenuating circumstances.^[4] With only four cars remaining in the pre-qualifying pool, the session was cancelled.^[5]

Qualifying report edit

During the Friday qualifying session, Ayrton Senna hit one of the bumps in the Esses, lost control of his McLaren, and crashed into a perimeter wall at 150 mph (240 km/h).^[6] He suffered whiplash and a severely bruised leg, and did not take any further part in this session, but was deemed fit enough to participate in the Saturday session.

Nigel Mansell took pole position in his Williams-Renault by 0.016 seconds from teammate Riccardo Patrese. The Benettons of Michael Schumacher and Martin Brundle made up the second row of the grid, though Schumacher's time was over 0.9 seconds slower than those of the Williams and Brundle's time was nearly 1.3 seconds slower than Schumacher's. The McLarens made up the third row, Gerhard Berger ahead of a still-sore Senna. The Dallaras impressed with JJ Lehto seventh and Pierluigi Martini ninth; between them was Maurício Gugelmin in the Jordan. Jean Alesi completed the top ten in his Ferrari; his teammate Ivan Capelli could only manage 20th.

The four non-qualifiers were Aguri Suzuki in the Footwork, Paul Belmondo in the March, and the two Brabhams of Eric van de Poele and Giovanna Amati. This was the first time in the Brabham team's history that neither of its cars had qualified.

Qualifying classification edit

Race report edit

Stefano Modena, having qualified 15th in the other Jordan, had to start the race from the pit lane.

Nigel Mansell dominated the race straight from the pole position, finishing the race 12 seconds ahead of Patrese and 21 seconds ahead of Michael Schumacher. Senna's transmission broke on the 11th lap, ending his race prematurely; teammate Berger finished 4th, salvaging some pride for McLaren in the farewell race for the MP4/6. Gerhard Berger managed to get ahead of Martin Brundle with a battle that managed to last for eight laps until Brundle was able to move back up to fourth on lap 44 but soon retired with engine trouble on lap 47, ending the battle for fourth. At the front, Mansell won with Patrese making it a Williams 1–2 again ahead of Schumacher, Berger, de Cesaris and Mika Häkkinen scoring the final point for Lotus for the second race in succession from South Africa and respectively the Finn's first point of the season.

Race classification edit

• Note: Only the top five positions are included for both sets of standings.

• Henry, Alan (1992). AUTOCOURSE 1992-93. Hazleton Publishing. ISBN 0-905138-96-1.