On Oct. 26, Lando Norris sailed to a win in the Mexico Grand Prix, building an enormous 30-second lead over Charles Leclerc, Max Verstappen and Oliver Bearman. His main rival in the drivers’ championship, Oscar Piastri, finished fifth.
The grid was led by Norris, followed by Leclerc, Lewis Hamilton, George Russell, Verstappen, Kimi Antonelli, Carlos Sainz and, after a poor weekend, Piastri in eighth. Turn 1 had Verstappen take off to line up side by side with Norris, Leclerc and Hamilton in a four-car squeeze. His lunge down the outside locked him up and forced him to cut the track, going off-road, as did Leclerc. Verstappen and Leclerc gained positions from corner-cutting without penalty, with Verstappen moving from fifth to fourth and Leclerc from second to first. Leclerc promptly gave his lead back to Norris the following turn. The order of the races is Norris, Leclerc, Hamilton and Verstappen, which lasted until Lap 6, during which Hamilton locked up in his fight with Verstappen and had to cut the corner, driving on the grass. Hamilton’s corner cutting handed him a costly 10-second penalty. An opportunistic Bearman took advantage of the chaos to lunge down the inside of Turn 6 to fourth place, ahead of Verstappen.
Meanwhile, championship leader Piastri was stuck in eighth place, as his teammate, Norris, built up an increasingly large gap to the grid in first. After the grid had all pitted around Lap 30 and Hamilton served his penalty, Verstappen overtook Hamilton with the aid of his DRS and soft tires. Antonelli is in sixth place on Lap 48 at the same time Piastri is in seventh. Crucially, Piastri’s quick pit stop led him to overtake Antonelli in the pit lane, bringing him up to sixth.
After Piastri overtook Russell on Lap 60, Norris, Leclerc, Verstappen, Bearman, Piastri and Russell stayed in that order until the finish line as Bearman, in his slower Haas, fought off Russell. The fight for second between Leclerc and Verstappen and for fourth between Bearman and Piastri came to a grinding halt under the Virtual Safety Car on the last lap, cementing the finishing order.
As Norris wins with a 30-second gap over the rest of the grid, he brings himself just one point above his teammate Piastri in the championship, making him the new championship leader. Verstappen, meanwhile, remains at a 40-point gap to the two. As they head to Sao Paulo on Nov. 9, all three of them will need to be in top form to compete for the title.
