The booing at the United States Grand Prix, and the lack of control that took place last year in the paddock of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, have led Red Bull to take action towards protecting Max Verstappen.

Helmut Marko made it known that the Dutch driver will be given bodyguards for this Mexico City GP to guard him from the crowd.

The hostility experienced last weekend at the Circuit of the Americas from a sector of the fans, and the emergence of some threats on social media, led them to make the decision to put individual security members on him.

"Max doesn't really want that and he's relaxed, but we have responsibility for him, so we just want to be on the safe side as a precaution," the Red Bull sporting advisor mentioned to F1 Insider.

Chaos in the paddock of the Mexico City GP 2022

Marko also pointed out that Verstappen will have bodyguards based on the problems that existed in the paddock of the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez last year.

Even home hero Checo Perez lamented the harassment he was subjected to by the large number of people in the paddock.

Can Mercedes challenge Red Bull?

Prior to his disqualification in the USA, Lewis Hamilton ran Verstappen close throughout the whole race and crossed the line just over two seconds behind despite losing around six seconds to Mercedes strategic errors.

In 2022, altitude reduced the problems of drag the team faced and they showed competitive pace with Red Bull in the first stint and, once again, it could happen in 2023.

Simulation data obtained by Albert Fabrega (@AlbertFabrega on X, formerly Twitter) indicates that the Silver Arrows could be just a tenth slower than Red Bull, giving the world champions a potential headache to deal with on Sunday.

McLaren and Ferrari are expected to be 0.2 tenths slower than Verstappen's team, which would work out at 14.2 seconds across the 71-lap race.