The exciting Formula 1 world championship was contesting its second appointment at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez after seeing the absolute dominance exerted by the Williams team in the inaugural test in South Africa.
The Grove team achieved a double thanks to the victory of Nigel Mansell and the second place of Riccardo Patrese in Kyalami, and it would be the first of the six that they would achieve in that successful campaign.
However, their rivals were eager to defeat them in Mexico, where they had already won twice, in 1987 and 1991. During practice, Ayrton Senna had been riding very fast, but lost control of the McLaren MP4/6B and crashed into the barrier, which left a very unusual image among riders of his stature.
The Brazilian suffered physical damage to his neck, for which he needed medical attention on the track itself, and with a visible face of pain, the doctors put a neck brace on him to limit his mobility.
Senna had asked the doctors led by Sid Watkins for help, and was carefully taken out of the car to be examined at the medical center, where only a bruise on his left leg was detected, without any damage to the cervical vertebrae.
In the evening, at the hotel, the Brazilian was treated by his physical therapist Josef Leberer , while Ron Dennis asked the reserves, Allan McNish , Mark Blundell and Jonathan Palmer , to be ready in case he had to replace Senna.
However, the São Paulo native did not let anything stop him, as usual, and in qualifying he jumped onto the track to reach sixth position, remaining around 2.5 seconds from Mansell’s pole position. To try to withstand the forces of their car, they lined the cockpit with a thick layer of foam, acting as a shock absorber against the bodywork, although he criticized the circuit.
“The Abed brothers did nothing! This track is incompatible with the demands of current F1, here the accident is certain, it can only be avoided with luck,” said who suffered one of the most serious crashes at the Hermanos Rodríguez Autodrome in 1991, when he ended up capsizing at the Peraltada curve.
The surprise came from a young Michael Schumacher, who was facing his first full-time season in Formula 1, being able to be third in the qualifying session and achieving his best result in the few 8 grand prix he had played.
The German, who signed with Benetton thanks to his performance in Belgium in 1991 with Jordan, had before him the perfect opportunity to show off his driving skills, and he did not disappoint.
At the start of the 1992 Mexican Grand Prix, the Williams quickly escaped, leaving their rivals no chance to answer, but Senna, who had just celebrated an eventful birthday, rose to third place, letting it be known that, although the champion he was hurt, there was no giving him up.
Schumacher, for his part, lost two places, to the Brazilian and to Brundle, but the German overtook the Briton on the following lap. The Benetton driver had never been on the podium in the top category, and after a failure in Senna’s transmission on lap 11, he ran as the clear favorite to accompany the Grove single-seaters in the positions of honour.
After completing the 69 laps of the test on Mexican soil, he became the sixth youngest driver in history to do so, and would be the first of the 155 drawers that the ‘Kaiser’ achieved throughout his career.
This was already predicted quite humorously by Flavio Britatore , who exclaimed on the grid: “Schumacher will finish on the podium!” When your crew chief says that, the pressure is huge, but the German kept his cool and finished in the top three.
“It’s the best day of my life!” said the German at the end of the race while his manager Willi Webber and his mentor Jochen Mass looked on. In addition, the latter was Schumacher’s teammate at Sauber-Mercedes, and was the last of this nationality to get on the podium in F1, not counting Stefan Bellof at the 1984 Monaco GP, and he did so at the Canadian GP of 1997.
But it was not a race without controversy, since before the event was held, the president and vice president of the organizing committee, the brothers José and Julian Abed respectively, met with the highest representative of FISA, Max Mosley, and praised the “important” change made in the Peraltada curve, but the drivers, once they reached the track, criticized it, since the change from 18º to 5º in the angle caused it to be even more dangerous due to the centrifugal force.
In addition, Bernie Ecclestone called for improvements to be made to the paddock, going so far as to claim that it was overrun by pickpockets and was heard to say that there were “fifty karate black belts at the entrance to the stands”.
That was the last time that Mexico hosted a test of the Great Circus until its return in 2015, with a completely modified layout and with an F1ESTA that is experienced throughout the entire weekend of competition at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodríguez.
