2025 Mexico City Grand Prix - Report.
McLaren's Lando Norris after winning the Mexico City Grand Prix.
As the lights went out and the cars barrelled down into turn one, it didn't take long to see a flurry of chaos as Leclerc and Verstappen both went wide which gave Leclerc the lead temporarily as he gave the position back to Norris due to the illegal nature of the overtake. Mercedes' Russell was fuming on the team radio as Verstappen went across the grass and was able to keep hold of the fourth position but the incidents that occured were noted by race control.
Lap 6 saw Verstappen return to the grass after an ambitious move on Hamilton but when he got back onto the track he pushed the Ferrari off of the track which had a somewhat domino effect as Russell was caught up in the chaos and tumbled down the order to P7. Someone who benefitted massively from the situation was Haas' young British rookie Ollie Bearman who was in P4 after this and looked very much in contention for a podium following the trend of other rookies like Kimi Antonelli and Isack Hadjar who have already picked up a podium in their own respective rookie year.
Meanwhile Oscar Piastri's struggles continued as he barrelled down to P9 which dwindled his hopes of picking up a podium to further extend his championship lead over Norris who by 17 laps in extended his race lead to six seconds over Charles Leclerc. Lewis Hamilton was given a major blow as he was given a ten second time penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage against Max Verstappen but he wasn't completely clear as he was still being investigated for another incident involving Verstappen.
Once the pits opened, Hamilton jumped into the pits which saw him serve his ten second time penalty and dwindle him down the grid order into P14, ending any hopes of a first Grand Prix podium with the Scuderia (excluding his sprint win in China). Sauber's Nico Hulkenberg suffered with power unit issues before the race which unfortunately returned and hampered Nico's race causing him to retire on only lap 28. Hulkenberg wasn't the only retirement as Racing Bulls saw Liam Lawson retire on lap 7 after a collision with Sainz on the first lap left him with damage.
Shortly after Aston Martin's Fernando Alonso retired after swapping positions with his teammate Lance Stroll with speculation that it was his own decision to retire whilst other reports are showing mechanical failure. With 20 laps remaining we were seeing the top ten shuffle around with Oscar Piastri making moves and eventually battling with Mercedes' Kimi Antonelli which saw both cars pit at the same time with Piastri coming out on top of that little exchange.
Carlos Sainz's luck with Williams continues to worsen as he was given a five second penalty for speeding in the pitlane whilst Ollie Bearman surrendered the third place position to Max Verstappen. In the closing stages of the race we saw Piastri climb up to fifth and chasing Ollie Bearman rapidly for P4 which would massively help retain his first place status in the drivers championship. Max Verstappen was battling hard against Charles Leclerc to swap his P3 position for a much needed P2 but that was soon hampered due to Carlos Sainz who prompted a virtual safety car as his Williams came to a stop on the track.
Lando Norris managed to bring his McLaren home with an astounding 30.324 second gap ahead of Charles Leclerc and Max Verstappen. Lando's win also makes the championship battle a very interesting one as he takes over by just one point over Oscar Piastri who finished in P5 behind Ollie Bearman who also deservedly was voted Driver of the Day by the F1 fans.
During the fallout from the race the Mexican fans booed Norris during his interview and even on the podium but the Brit swiftly shrugged them off and celebrated his first ever win in Mexico. In the post race presser Norris went onto admit that he was "puzzled" by the hostile reaction from the Mexican faithful and went onto shrug it off by going onto say "I don't know why to be honest. People can do what they want honestly, that is sport sometimes, I can’t stop laughing when I get booed. You don’t want it, I’d prefer if people cheer for me. Who knows? I just concentrate on doing my thing. If they want to continue they can."
Lewis Hamilton was interviewed by Sky Sports and was a man of few words and was understandably disappointed by a P3 qualification place dropping down to a P8 race finish, he went onto say "No, it's very dirty I did the best I could to bring it back safely." Whilst his teammate Charles Leclerc went onto reflect about his own race and more specifically the latter stages which saw him battle for the 2nd position with Max Verstappen "That was the most stressful part of the race, I felt that this would be the end of my race. The last part of the race was quite tricky. I knew that Max was on the preferred tyres at that point. The soft today was much better, which is very strange. I'm happy with everything - we got a bit lucky with the safety car."
With a week off teams get to reflect and debrief before we see our final races of the season which consist of;
Brazil 07-09 Nov. (SPRINT RACE)
Las Vegas 21-23 Nov.
Qatar 28-30 Nov. (SPRINT RACE)
Abu Dhabi 05-07 Dec.
We currently see the top three of the drivers' championship as follows;
Lando Norris (McLaren): 357pts
Oscar Piastri (McLaren): 356pts
Max Verstappen (RedBull): 321pts.
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