Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez

Overview

The Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez lies inside the Magdalena Mixhuca sports city, a public park in the east of Mexico City a couple of kilometres from the international airport. Owned by the Government of Mexico City, it seats around 110,000 spectators and is the home of the Formula One Mexico City Grand Prix. The circuit also hosts the Formula E Mexico City ePrix and the NASCAR Mexico Series, and its grounds are used for large music festivals. The name honours the racing brothers Ricardo and Pedro Rodríguez. The venue sits more than 2,200 m above sea level, an altitude that penalised naturally aspirated engines, a handicap that turbocharged engines largely avoid.

Technical Specifications and Track Features

The Grand Prix layout has 17 corners. The opening complex of turns 1 to 3 is named after Moisés Solana, turn 6 after Héctor Rebaque, turn 12 after Adrián Fernández and the last corner after Nigel Mansell, who won the Mexican Grand Prix in 1987 and 1992. Since the 2015 rebuild the lap no longer runs through the whole of the Peraltada, the long banked final curve: a slow left-right section through the baseball stadium inside it bypasses the first half, and cars rejoin the curve halfway round. The banking of the Peraltada was 15 degrees at first, cut to 9 in 1986 and to 3 in 1992. The pit straight runs about 1.2 km into the first braking zone, and Formula One cars have passed 360 km/h at its end. A 1,609 m oval, in use since 1962, completes the stored configurations; Formula E and a shorter national circuit use their own variants.

Facilities and Specialized Areas

For Formula One's return in 2015 the circuit was rebuilt with a new pit building, a medical centre, hospitality and VIP areas and new grandstands. The baseball stadium formerly known as Foro Sol stands inside the Peraltada and also hosts concerts, and a second ballpark, the Estadio Alfredo Harp Helú, was completed in 2019 inside the track near the first corners. In 2020 the complex was turned into a temporary COVID-19 hospital with 218 beds.

History

The original layout began as a student thesis by the architect Óscar Fernández, and the circuit was built by the Federal District authorities and opened in 1959 as the Autódromo Magdalena Mixhuca. Ricardo Rodríguez was killed in practice for the non-championship Mexican Grand Prix of 1962, and the circuit was renamed after him; when his brother Pedro died in a race in Germany in 1971, it took the name of both brothers. The Mexican Grand Prix was a championship round from 1963 to 1970, when crowd control problems ended the first era. Formula One returned in 1986 with a new pit complex and left after 1992. In 2001 the track was reworked for Champ Car with a section through the stadium, and a CART round in 2002 drew a record crowd of 402,413. Hermann Tilke redesigned the circuit for Formula One's return in 2015, a race won by Nico Rosberg, and the World Endurance Championship visited in 2016 and 2017.