The race that crowned Formula 1’s youngest ever world champion and was won from fifth on the grid by a driver penalised for a practice collision was actually most memorable for the Ferrari drivers in second and fourth shooting themselves in the foot.
And three of the original top 10 had their points finishes taken away after the race, meaning the eventual scorers including a driver thrown in for his F1 debut halfway through the weekend.
So quite a few more losers than winners in our list once again.
Here’s the full range of Mexican Grand Prix emotions.
Loser: Ferrari (2nd & 4th)
Ferrari’s squabbling drivers went too far this time. Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc have got in each other’s way and had some futile clashes already but in Mexico, they threw away as nailed-on a win for Ferrari as it could hope to have.
This race was almost completely devoid of overtaking except for drivers recovering from being out of position, or encountering trouble. So as Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur observed: “When you are 1-2 in Turn 4, you don’t imagine that you won’t win the race.”
Ferrari didn’t, thanks to Leclerc getting a penalty for cutting across the track after a fight that allowed Max Verstappen to jump Hamilton for second.
It was an act of self-sabotage for a team that was on pole position on merit and should have had its best day of the season. – Scott Mitchell-Malm
Winner: Max Verstappen (1st)
Max needed a helping hand from Mercedes and Ferrari to win this one but when he got in front it was vintage Verstappen to soak up pressure and drive faultlessly to victory.
He wouldn’t have been in a position to benefit from Ferrari’s implosion at Turn 4 had George Russell not suffered a massive deployment shortage down to the first corner, which gifted a place to Verstappen.
Thereafter, Verstappen incisively jumped ahead of Hamilton when he was delayed by the Leclerc scrap, and stayed just close enough to Leclerc that Red Bull’s fine work in the pits allowed him to jump ahead as Leclerc served his five-second penalty.
The red flag helped Verstappen in the sense that it cut short the mammoth stint on softs he’d have needed to pull off to win, but it also gave him a full standing restart to navigate – and he robustly but just about legally defended the lead from Hamilton. – SMM
Loser: George Russell (6th)
Russell looked perfectly positioned at the start heading to Turn 1 and might have had a chance at fighting for the lead – until he had a deployment issue and it looked like someone cranked on his brake for him.
It’s typical that in the race where Kimi Antonelli seals the championship, Russell is the driver who initially started ahead but whose challenge was effectively blunted by something out of his control.
Clipping Isack Hadjar further around the opening lap – and the penalty for that was harsh as Russell was alongside for a while and didn’t have a lot of room to move out of the way short of slamming his brakes on to fall in line behind – really didn’t help.
He was stuck behind the Leclerc/Lando Norris battle for fourth at the end and struggled to come through.
A perfect reflection of a year that could have been his. It ends on a damp squib while his team-mate celebrates. And there was even a post-race fine for skipping media duties too. – Jack Benyon
Winner: Kimi Antonelli (3rd)
You’ll be reading a lot about Antonelli in various places over the next few days, so allow me to zero in on a more unusual element of the new champion’s race that I really enjoyed.
Late in the race, he was fourth – perhaps unfairly after the stewards chose the order from the lap before the safety car that preceded the red flag, and put Hamilton back in front of Antonelli – and in the wheel tracks of Leclerc.
OK, the title was basically wrapped up at this point (it had been a week ago at Austin) but what happened next absolutely thrilled me. Instead of sitting there like a prize show hound waiting to receive its first in show trophy, Antonelli leapt up and chose entertainment for the crowd! He dived down the inside of Leclerc to ensure that his title celebrations would be orchestrated from the podium, not a weird no man’s land from a result off it.
It was the kind of calculated drive that has underpinned this title. And the kind of move that feels wholly and totally Kimi. Probably an unnecessary risk, but it was ace, and paid off. – JB
Loser: Oscar Piastri (13th)
On another day, this could have been a strong recovery drive from a tough qualifying, but it just fell short for Oscar Piastri even before his post-race penalty was applied.
Piastri made hay in the first half of the race after a good initial getaway, but admitted his progress was undone by a sluggish restart that paved the way for his race-defining incident with the Racing Bulls of Arvid Lindblad.
Contact and subsequent damage came when the McLaren driver was “trying to concede” Turn 2 to avoid a crash, but despite his best efforts he couldn’t get out quick enough and sent Lindblad skittling into the wall and picked up a chunk of damage.
The stewards deemed his defence that “it wasn’t like I tried to stick my nose into Turn 2” as insufficient and a 10-second time penalty rendered his comeback drive pointless. – Eden Hannigan
Loser: Arvid Lindblad (DNF)
After chastising himself for not being higher on the grid in qualifying – a ruthless display of the incredibly high standards he holds himself to – Lindblad looked to have somewhat made up for it by being in a genuine fight with the McLaren of Piastri for seventh that would’ve been his second-best result of the season after sixth in Monaco.
Then they collided.
Lindblad didn’t want to comment in his post-race media before watching the incident back, so we’re short of his in-depth explanation. The stewards totally exonerated him and penalised Piastri.
But I don’t think Lindblad was totally innocent in this one.
Whether he moved under braking or not at Turn 1 (“very late” was Piastri’s opinion) feels like a separate matter. The next element, where he crowded Piastri off the track, was an incident we saw happen multiple times during this race including between Verstappen and Hamilton for the lead. But it never ended this badly for anyone else.
Ultimately Lindblad needed to choose self-preservation here – Piastri couldn’t disappear and this was a strong result lost whereas even settling for eighth would’ve bolstered Racing Bulls’ fifth in the constructors’ championship. Alpine’s later penalties meant Racing Bulls still pulled further clear in Mexico, but at first the Piastri/Lindblad collision meant a swing in Alpine’s favour. – JB
Loser: Alpine (15th & 17th)
Alpine had its best result since the Italian GP at the start of September – and then it lost it all.
Franco Colapinto fended off Liam Lawson, who started in the pitlane remember, to finish top of the midfield after Lindblad’s late exit stage right following a clash with Piastri.
A subsequent Piastri penalty elevated Colapinto to seventh in the results and promoted Pierre Gasly to ninth, too.
Ultimately, it was second-best in terms of midfield pace once again, but it was a welcome bit of fortune that seemed to have earned Alpine more points in one race than in its previous five weekends combined.
Then yellow flag penalties for both drivers took it all away and left it a whopping 35 points away from Racing Bulls in their battle for fifth in the championship. – SMM
Winner: Liam Lawson (7th)
What a rollercoaster weekend. A penalty for colliding with Verstappen (the worst person for a Red Bull junior team driver with no firm deal for next season to collide with) in practice, another penalty for an MGU-K rules breach in qualifying that ultimately led to a pitlane start.
And then decent progress through the field on a recovery drive that ended up very profitable when late- and post-race mayhem and penalties elevated Liam Lawson right up to seventh place. – Matt Beer
Loser: Isack Hadjar (9th)
From seventh on the grid, Isack Hadjar would have had hopes of moving forward in the race but, unfortunately for the Red Bull driver, he was never really afforded the chance to get going.
Helped into a spin by Russell, Hadjar tumbled down the order and wasn’t able to recover over the remaining 70 laps. Although Russell was ultimately penalised for the incident, on another day, it could have been argued that Hadjar didn’t leave enough room for the Mercedes driver to take the corner safely.
Ultimately, he did well to get up to 12th on the road given the damage inflicted upon his Red Bull and the amount of time he lost not just in the collision but in the mayhem of the restarts. The post-race penalties meant he eventually scored points for ninth.
But that’s far, far less than he could’ve done on a day his team-mate won again. – EH
Loser: Aston Martin (2x DNF)
In a weekend that started out promising and got progressively worse, Sunday proved to be the breaking point for Aston Martin and its Honda power unit.
After retiring within seconds of each other just seven laps into the race, Lance Stroll and Fernando Alonso were pretty coy on the reasons for the double DNF.
Alonso confirmed no changes were made to the cars after his qualifying issue, but went on to suggest that the Honda power unit “underestimated” the challenges presented by Mexico’s high altitude and had no chance of completing the full race distance. Honda cited cooling issues.
Points did look a long way off after its issues in qualifying, that’s for sure, but a borderline embarrassing double DNF was more akin to the Aston Martin we saw at the start of the season than the new and improved midfield challenger it showed it can be with its Friday pace. – EH
Loser: Cadillac (16th & DNF)
It would only have been elevated there after most of the crowd had left the circuit, but this should have been Cadillac’s first F1 points finish and it should have come on Sergio Perez’s home crowd.
Absolutely brilliant first laps on both the original start and restart meant he reached the lofty heights of 13th place. And until a slow first pitstop due to a wheelgun issue and a later pitlane speeding penalty, he was holding his own there in front of faster cars.
And he was certainly set to beat the man who eventually inherited 10th place after all the post-race penalties (more on him in a moment).
So while it was glorious to see how high Perez ran, the final result has to count as a heartbreaker.
And the nature of Valtteri Bottas’s violent exit from the race was simply unnerving. Teething troubles are to be expected for a brand new F1 team but the consequences of this one were potentially frightening. – MB
Winner: Ryo Hirakawa (10th)
Double World Endurance champion, Le Mans 24 Hours winner, F1 points scorer.
Having lost out to Rafa Camara in the fight for the 2027 Haas seat and with a WEC clash next weekend and Camara surely the favourite to step in permanently if Esteban Ocon doesn’t return, this short-notice mid-weekend call-up is highly likely to be the extent of Ryo Hirakawa’s F1 racing career.
And – albeit with rather a lot of assistance from circumstances and penalties – he ends it as a top-10 finisher.
The fact it was inherited post-race actually does the overall quality of Hirakawa’s performance in the tough circumstances a disservice, as he performed extremely respectably. – MB
