Lando Norris took back the lead in the F1 drivers’ standings after winning the 2025 Mexico City Grand Prix, while Max Verstappen also gained ground on Oscar Piastri.
Piastri came into the weekend with a 14-point advantage over Norris and a 40-point gap to Verstappen. But by Sunday evening, Norris had overtaken him by a single point, with Verstappen now just 36 points off the pace.
This was Piastri’s first time off the top spot since round five of the season, when he won in Saudi Arabia. He finished fifth in Mexico, more than 42 seconds behind Norris, who started from pole and controlled the race throughout.
Norris looked comfortable all weekend, taking pole position by over two-tenths ahead of Charles Leclerc before pulling away to win by more than half a minute. Verstappen was closing in on second place late on but ran out of laps due to a virtual safety car.
Max Verstappen admits his Mexico City Grand Prix race pace was not on Lando Norris’ ‘level’
Verstappen and Red Bull took a different approach at the start of the Mexico City GP, opting for Pirelli’s C4 medium tyres while most others chose the softer C5s. The C5 proved to be the quicker race tyre, forcing Verstappen to wait until Lap 37 of 71 before making his stop.
Even if Verstappen had matched Norris’ tyre strategy, he acknowledged after the race that his pace still wouldn’t have been enough to challenge the Briton. Verstappen put in consistent laps in the low 1:21s on the softs, but Norris was consistently two-tenths quicker than anyone else.
“We still weren’t at Lando’s level if you look at the race average,” said Verstappen, as quoted by RacingNews365. “But the softs were clearly a better tyre to race on. It all felt a bit better. P3 is really good for us, considering it was a difficult weekend.”
Lando Norris cruised to victory at the Mexico City Grand Prix with race pace that left everyone else trailing
Norris was largely in cruise control in the lead of last Sunday’s Mexico City GP after surviving the first lap. The Briton was at a slight disadvantage for the long run to Turn 1 by starting on pole, yet he produced a clean launch to deny Ferrari’s Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton the inside.
Norris didn’t need long to build a comfortable gap at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez and soon controlled the pace. Verstappen couldn’t keep up, and Red Bull later decided to switch him from medium tyres to softs after lap 37.
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But even after making that change, Verstappen admits he still didn’t have enough pace compared to Norris. “We still weren’t at Lando’s level if you look at the race average,” he told RacingNews365. “But the softs were clearly a better tyre to race on. It all felt a bit better.”
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