Carlos Sainz dominated the Mexico City Grand Prix for a second consecutive Ferrari victory after title leader Max Verstappen served a 20s penalty for an ugly early series of incidents with championship contender Lando Norris.
Verstappen got a better launch from the front row than polesitter Sainz, and ran the Spaniard out of road at the first corner, sending the Ferrari onto the grass. Sainz saw the nudge coming and kept his foot in, handing back the place on the run down to Turn 4 but retaining second place.
The race was neutralized for five laps after a clumsy collision off the line put Yuki Tsunoda and Alex Albon out — neither driver was considered at fault — and Verstappen nailed his getaway to lead Sainz, Norris and Charles Leclerc at the restart, but the Dutchman didn’t have the pace to hold the lead. With DRS enabled, Sainz was all over the back of the Red Bull Racing car exiting the last corner ahead of lap nine, and a gutsy lunge down the inside scythed him into the lead.
Norris was next onto the tail of Verstappen, who complained his engine mode was lacking battery assist.
The Briton used DRS out of Turn 3 to launch a move around the outside of Turn 4, but in a repeat of their controversial clash at the end of last weekend’s race at COTA, Verstappen ran deep to push Norris off the road. Norris kept his foot in to retain the place and led the battle out of Turn 6 and up to the esses, but Verstappen wasn’t satisfied with the move. Braking from a long way back, he sailed down Norris’s inside and took both drivers well off the circuit to retake the place.
“This guy’s dangerous,” Norris radioed his team. “I just have to avoid a crash. It’s the same as last time. I’ll end up in the wall in a minute.”
Both moves raised the ire of the stewards, who slapped Verstappen with a 10s penalty for each.
“That’s quite impressive,” Verstappen said sarcastically after news of his first punishment. He described the second as “silly.”
“There was a lot of whingeing,” engineer Gianpiero Lambiase said. “A lot.”
With Verstappen out of the picture, the race for the podium places boiled down to a three-way fight between the Ferrari drivers and Norris. The McLaren driver opened the pit stops for the leaders, switching from mediums to hards on lap 30. Leclerc and Sainz followed on subsequent laps, retaining their positions. Sainz rejoined with a lead of just under 10s, while Norris’s gap to second stood at just under 5s. Both margins closed gradually as the stint wore on and the race headed towards a crunch in the final 10 laps.
“My opinion is that we are pushing too hard,” Sainz radioed as his lead came down beneath 6s. “Absolutely no need for it.”
With Norris pushing for more points for his title campaign, Sainz and Leclerc had no choice but to keep up the hot pace to the finish. It took until lap 59 for Norris to get within a second of Leclerc and until lap 62 for him to get DRS down the front straight. Leclerc, struggling with his rear tires, was told he would need his “best driving” to hold the position.
The Monegasque knew he needed to nail his exit from the last corner to defend against the DRS, but the critical mistake came immediately, his car snapping from underneath him on exit and sending him perilously close to the barriers. Norris sailed through into second, but by then Sainz had used the squabble to re-extend his lead to more than 7s — too big to close in less than 10 laps, securing Sainz his second of the season.
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“Honestly, I really wanted this one,” he said. “I really needed it also for myself. I’ve ben saying for a while I want one more win before leaving Ferrari, and to do it here in front of this mega crowd, it’s incredible.
“Now with four races left I want to enjoy as much as possible, and if another one comes, I will go for it.”
Norris took eight points out of Verstappen’s title lead, closing to within 47 points of the title lead.
“It was a very tough race,” he said. “I just keep my head down. I’m doing my best.
“We’re doing a very good job as a team. I think today we were probably the quickest in the end. We’ll keep our heads down. That’s all I can do for now. We focus on ourselves and keep pushing.”
Leclerc pitted for soft tires to set the fastest lap on the final tour, scoring a bonus point in third place. The score moved Ferrari past Red Bull Racing into second with a 25-point buffer in the constructors championship. The Italian team is now just 29 points behind McLaren in the battle for the lead.
“It’s a good weekend overall for the team, which is positive,” he said. “It’s been quite a few races now we’ve been coming back to the level we should be at.
“Obviously the constructors is still our target, and on weekends like this we are getting closer to it. I hope we can continue in that direction and get that constructors title, which is very important.”
Mercedes teammates George Russell and Lewis Hamilton battled aggressively through the race, Hamilton gaining a place off the line but losing it again despite some borderline defending into the first turn on lap 15. Both drivers were told they were free to race in the final stint, which was absorbed by a long duel between the silver cars, before Hamilton broke past with five laps to go, albeit 45s behind the winner.
Verstappen’s 20s penalty dropped him to 15th after making his sole pit stop at the end of lap 26, forcing him into a long recovery drive back into the points. The Mercedes drivers had been the target, but the Dutchman reported a lack of grip on his hard tires halfway through the stint, his progress slowing considerably once he rose to sixth.
Kevin Magnussen finished an excellent seventh for Haas, retaining his lofty grid position and completing an unlikely defense against the fast-finishing McLaren of Oscar Piastri.
Piastri recovered from 17th on the grid to eighth at the flag, having risen as high as fifth before making his first pit stop and setting up a late-race dash to the flag. He passed Nico Hulkenberg easily for eighth, but much like Verstappen, his pace also slowed late in the stint on hards, leaving him stranded in position.
Nico Hulkenberg finished ninth for an eight-point haul for Haas, extending its lead over RB for sixth in the constructors championship, while Pierre Gasly picked up the final point of the race for Alpine to close to within three points of Williams in eighth.
Lance Stroll finished 11th ahead of Franco Colapinto, Valtteri Bottas, Esteban Ocon, Zhou Guanyu and Liam Lawson, who had to pit a second time after a clash battling to defend 12th from Colapinto.
Sergio Perez finished 17th after a horror home race. Though he gained five places off the line, he was judged to have started too far forward of his pit box, incurring a 5s penalty. He damaged the car while battling with Lawson for 10th and lost further time squabbling with Stroll over 11th, forcing him into an early pit stop. Unable to make it to the end on that fresh set of mediums, a second stop put paid to his race.
Red Bull Racing offered him a late pit stop for softs to take a consolation point for fastest lap, but he was blitzed to the score by Leclerc by 0.873s, leaving him a pointless and distant last on the road.
