Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez: Race Report

The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez race report shows a dominating victory by a New Zealander in Mexico. And while the cautions didn’t show it, there was a lot of beating and banging throughout the pack.

Lead- and Caution-O-Grams

As usual, the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez race report starts with the lead- and caution-o-gram.

Cautions

The number of cautions was surprising because there were a lot of spins. But there’s a lot of room at road courses, so not all accidents end up causing cautions.

Here’s the breakdown for those incidents that did bring out the yellow flag.

‘Incident Rate’ refers to percentage of total incidents

	Incidents	% Total Incidents	Caution Laps	% of All Caution Laps	% of Total Laps Run
Accident	1	16.7	2	12.5	2.0
Stage End	2	33.3	6	37.5	6.0
Spin	2	33.3	5	31.2	5.0
Weather	1	16.7	3	18.8	3.0

There were a total of six cautions, four of them unplanned. The cautions felt really long. One lap around the 2.4-mile track at the caution car speed ends up being 3.2 minutes. That made a three-lap caution about 10 minutes.

Cautions accounted for 16 laps, or 16.0% of the total race.

Laps Led and Lead Changes

Here’s the laps led summary:

Laps Led by Driver: 2025 Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez

	Laps Led	% Laps Led	Laps Run	% Laps Led/Laps Run
Van Gisbergen	60	60.0	100	60.0
Gibbs	27	27.0	100	27.0
Bell	4	4.0	100	4.0
Preece	4	4.0	100	4.0
McDowell	2	2.0	100	2.0
Byron	1	1.0	100	1.0
Cindric	1	1.0	100	1.0
Buescher	1	1.0	100	1.0

Eight drivers led laps, with Shane Van Gisbergen leading the most laps at 60.0% of the race. Ty Gibbs, who suffered from an unfortunate caution timing, led the second-most laps with 27.0%. (I love races that are exactly 100 laps. It makes the math so easy!)

NASCAR reports 14 lead changes, but I would claim only 12.

• Two lead changes (in my view) don’t count, because they were when the driver starting P2 on a restart beat the P1 driver to the S/F line, but the P1 driver led the next lap.
• One lead change was a green-flag pass.
• Five lead changes happened on restarts.
• Three lead changes were inherited during green-flag pit stops
• Two lead changes were inherited during yellow-flag pit stops
• One lead change was earned by William Byron winning the race off pit road during a yellow-flag stop.

Banging and Spinning at Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez

I watch each race carefully to log incidents that don’t cause cautions, but that cause one or more cars to losing positions. There were 43 such incidents during the race, which included drivers having to backup on pit road due to concern over loose wheels, tire issues, a dashboard fire, and accidents/spins.

Carson Hocevar and Ricky Stenhouse, Jr. were two of the drivers involved in multiple incidents — and not just with each other. They weren’t always at fault: Riley Herbst’s attempt to get back on track nearly took out Stenhouse, who was minding his own business.

Also see my summary of race results for finishes and points.

And that’s the 2025 Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez race report! Next up: Pocono.