Mark Hughes: How Norris found serenity – with Mexico chaos behind

A perfect weekend for one title contender, difficult ones for his two rivals. Lando Norris was in supreme form throughout the Mexican Grand Prix weekend, leading from pole to flag to take his sixth victory of the season by the margin of half a minute over Charles Leclerc‘s Ferrari. Red Bull was unable to place Max Verstappen‘s car in anything like the sweet spot it has enjoyed since Monza and it was a brilliant combined team-driver performance for him just to finish third. Oscar Piastri lost the lead of the championship to McLaren team-mate Norris after a second consecutive weekend of struggling to maximise the car in conditions of low grip.

Norris didn’t get to drive his car until the second practice session. It had been handled by Pato O’Ward in FP1, but as soon as Lando tried it, he felt good. There was no getting up to speed; he was at speed. The car was giving him all the messages he needed and when it does that his confidence soars. “It never felt like that in Singapore, for example,” he said, “where I was struggling to get a feel for the front end.” He was by far the quickest in the long runs on Friday, with a handy 0.5sec over Piastri, who just could not gel with the need to allow the car to slide in order to be quick.

Verstappen had done the fastest single lap on Friday, but with the car like that, it had degraded its rear tyres horribly quickly in the long runs. There was no way it could be raced like that and a significant set-up change was made overnight to give the rear tyres an easier time. This meant sacrificing the single-lap pace, and it was all Verstappen could do to put it fifth on the grid, 0.5sec adrift of Norris’ pole, but a couple of places ahead of Piastri.

With Piastri and Red Bull struggling and the Mercedes‘ tyres not liking hot conditions, there was an open goal for Ferrari and they filled it. Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton qualified second and third, ahead of Russell but knowing they weren’t going to be able to do anything about Norris unless they could jump him at the start.

Norris, acutely aware of how important it was to keep them behind, thwarted Hamilton’s slipstreaming efforts by backing off early in front of him. Hamilton switched left, where Leclerc already was, not realising that Leclerc couldn’t give him any more room because he had Verstappen to his left. The Ferraris touched, Verstappen clattered over the kerbs and took to the first run-off. Leclerc took to the shallower run-off and rejoined in the lead but taking care to give the place back to Norris. Verstappen rejoined third but gave it back to Hamilton, who was then expecting Leclerc to give him the second place he believed he was in when Leclerc had left the track.

Leclerc didn’t see it that way and pressed on. Hamilton spent the next few laps asking the team what it was doing about the situation and was still in discussion about this on the sixth lap when Verstappen launched up his inside from way back, Hamilton compromised by having to lift and coast. They touched, Verstappen went off again and rejoined ahead. Hamilton tried to pass into T4, but Verstappen held him out wide and Hamilton took to the run-off area, but in rejoining now ahead hadn’t taken the route prescribed in the race director’s notes. He also chose not to give the place back – and as such was given a 10sec penalty to be taken at his pitstop. That took him out of contention.

As Verstappen scrambled through Turns 4-5 in his Hamilton dice, he was passed by Oliver Bearman‘s Haas. Red Bull had opted to start Verstappen on the slower medium tyre so as to ensure they could run long enough on the faster one-stop strategy to get onto the soft. Everyone else in the top 10 had started on the faster but less durable soft, confident they could do a long enough first stint on it. So Bearman was able to pull away while Verstappen had the Mercs and Piastri queued up behind him.

Norris was serene out front, Leclerc pitting from 16sec behind, the McLaren coming in without even losing the lead a few laps later. Verstappen ran a couple of laps longer and switched to the softs. With everyone else on mediums, he was finally set to make some progress and quickly picked off Hamilton upon rejoining and set off after the Mercs and Piastri.

McLaren pitted Piastri for a second time, trying to get him by the Mercs, triggering Antonelli, Russell and Bearman into doing the same. It got Piastri ahead of Antonelli, allowing the McLaren to chase down Russell, who could find no way by Bearman. Piastri put a big move on Russell into Turn 1 and set off after Bearman. But the flurry of second stops had vaulted the one-stopping Verstappen up to third – and with a big tyre offset advantage over Leclerc.

With two laps to go, Verstappen was within reaching distance of Leclerc’s second, and Piastri was right with Bearman. But those contests were neutralised by a VSC for Carlos Sainz‘s broken-down Williams. The news just kept getting better for Norris, the new leader of the world championship.