F1 - Mexican GP

Round 20 in Mexico delivered an exciting race filled with incidents and a new championship leader with just 4 races left in the season. Let's examine the Mexico City Grand Prix of 2025.

Performances

McLaren - incredible race from Lando Norris. Pole and a dominant race, leading every lap and finishing 30 seconds ahead of second place. Also he joins Michael Schumacher as the only two drivers to take their first 10 wins at 10 different circuits. Exactly what he needed and he is now the new WDC leader by a single point, and has incredible momentum heading into the final four races. As for his main rival Oscar Piastri, it was honestly a decent weekend of damage control. P8 in quali was poor but he showed good racecraft (easily his biggest strength) to get some overtakes done and a P5 finish. I'm still struggling to find the reason for such a massive pace difference between the two however?

Ferrari - good quali and drive from Leclerc to get P2 and some welcome points for Ferrari in the battle over P2 in the constructors. Lewis... I'll try my best not to crashout. I do think he probably deserved a penalty for gaining an advantage by cutting the track but then why did Leclerc and Verstappen not get a penalty for doing the same thing??? Again I wouldn't be mad at the penalty if at least it was applied fairly to everyone!!!! And honestly the racing rules are a complete joke at this point and have been since Austria 2019. I don't blame Max really for doing all of his overtaking like this because the rules allow it, he's just playing the game. But the fact that you can literally do anything just because you're ahead at the apex or whatever is a total joke!!! Anyway crashout over and at least we had actual pace this weekend. I'm devastated because after quali I really thought we were going to do something. But Brazil is our last chance for a podium this season imo. Please Lewis🙏🙏🙏

Red Bull - even though Max was probably lucky to avoid some sort of penalty in this race he drove fantastically, especially on his last stint on the soft tires where he probably could have overtaken Leclerc on the last lap if not for an unfortunate VSC. P3 is at least good points and he still gains on one of his championship rivals in Piastri. He's now just 36 points behind Norris and with 116 total points up for grabs in the last 4 events it's still all to play for. Yuki has been slowly improving and his defense of Piastri definitely helped Max out today. I think he had a slow pitstop of over 10 seconds and as a result fell out of the points, but only 2 tenths off Max in quali was good.

Mercedes - George could maybe have had a go for P4 or P5 today if they swapped the cars a bit earlier and didn't waste 5 laps cooking his tires in dirty air, but honestly the overall pace just wasn't there today. Kimi once again had much better pace and was very close to George the entire weekend, I think this is his first proper head to head win against George this season too. They honestly need to look at what happened to him in the european races because this Kimi seems like a completely different driver now, more like what we saw at the start of the year. Only a point off Ferrari for P2 in the WCC now.

Haas - their best weekend of the season so far. Ocon finally showed a bit of quali pace and managed to bring the car home in P9 for some points but we really need to talk about that Ollie Bearman masterclass! His third Q3 appearance in a row and a wonderful start meant that he was actually running in the podium places for a bit before finishing in a wonderful P4. He's really improved a lot this year and this is a fantastic result that ties the best ever finish for Haas in F1. Big result that puts them just 10 points behind Racing Bulls for P6 in the WCC.

Aston Martin - no pace this weekend and another retirement at Mexico for Fernando. He's only ever finished 3 races here. Stroll was pretty anonymous during the race too. Bad weekend.

Williams - Carlos had a very unlucky weekend. Managed to get into Q3 with good pace but dropped down the grid due to his penalty and then when points looked on one of the sensors on his car broke meaning that he couldn't slow down in the pitlane properly and recieved penalties for speeding. He eventually spun and retired. Albon honestly had a pretty terrible weekend overall with no real pace. It feels like the two drivers have swapped form books as the year has gone on - Albon good in the first half while Sainz better in the second.

Racing Bulls - Hadjar was running decently in the points after another Q3 appearance but I think they messed up his strategy as he only finished P13. Lawson retired with damage.

Sauber - good result for Bortoleto to score a point in P10 from 16th on the grid. Hopefully he can have a good home race next time out in Brazil! Hulkenberg was unlucky to retire pretty early with an engine issue.

Alpine - copy paste from every weekend. Disgusting car that is 2 seconds a lap slower than the leaders and 0.6 seconds slower than last year. Feeling bad for the two drivers.

Race rating - 7/10 - a lot of incidents in this one and a few bits of good racing, a battle for the lead and it would have been a bit higher! Still a great race and easily the best Mexican GP of the last few years though.

Driver of the race - two options really here. I honestly can't split them so I'll give a joint award to Lando Norris for such a dominant drive and to Ollie Bearman for a fantastic performance to get his best ever result in F1! Very well done to these two.

Team radio of the race - George Russell repeatedly begging his team to swap the cars was hilarious😂😂😂😂

Next weekend - the sensational Brazilian Grand Prix at the superb Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace, more commonly known as Interlagos! Named after Carlos Pace, a race winner that tragically died in a plane crash in 1977, the circuit is anti-clockwise and built on hilly terrain, making it physically tough on both car and driver. The layout is superb for F1 racing, and combined with the rapid changeable conditions, has produced many classics over the years and is considered as one of the finest tracks on the calendar. Some of the best races over the years have been: 1982(incredible heat as winner Piquet collapses on the podium from heatstroke before the top two are disqualified in controversial circumstances), 1991(not for the race but Senna finally winning Brazil with a broken car and cramps with fever is amazing), 2003 (an insane number of crashes in crazy conditions and the race literally went to a courtroom and took almost a week to decide before Fisichella was declared the winner for Jordan!), 2012 (the greatest F1 title decider in changing conditions with Vettel fighting back from spinning on lap one and Hulkenberg almost winning), 2021 (Hamilton winning after disqualification from qualifying), 2024 (Verstappen winning from P17 in wet conditions as Alpine gets a double podium)

Also can we just appreciate the rookies this year!! I think this is one of the best rookie classes we've seen in a while in Formula 1 - Bortoleto, Hadjar, Antonelli and Bearman have all had fantastic drives this year and we've really been able to see their talent shine through. The future of F1 is looking good in their hands.