The four-way 2018 battle Mexico promised

Max Verstappen could not help but be fast in Mexico. With the race in the bag, and his Red Bull team monitoring the gap back to Valtteri Bottas, he could only say "I'm really sorry" when admonished for his lap times having stayed the same after agreeing to ease off.

At that point, early in the second stint of what was a one-stop race for the first and second place finishers, Bottas still had a vague hope of closing the gap after both had switched from ultra-softs to super-softs.

That Verstappen could match or outpace Bottas seemingly without trying tells you everything that you need to know about his supremacy. It was a future champion's drive on a day when Lewis Hamilton became the champion of today.

Hamilton should have been part of that lead scrap, and momentarily was.

After taking a scintillating pole position, Ferrari's Sebastian Vettel found himself under attack from Verstappen on the outside line into the Turn 1 right-hander.

Vettel pushed Verstappen wide, but not too wide, with the pair making contact out of the ensuing left-hander. Hamilton didn't need another invitation, going to the outside of both at the Turn 3 right-hander.

Sandwiched between Verstappen and Vettel as he exited the corner, and knowing that this was his best chance to gain a track position advantage, Hamilton wasn't going to back down. But he had to check up thanks to Verstappen's compromised exit. Vettel did not react quickly enough to avoid hitting the right-rear corner of Hamilton's car.

The result: Vettel hurried back to the pits for a new front wing while Hamilton crawled back for a new set of boots as Verstappen charged into the distance ahead of Valtteri Bottas.

The world championship battle, such as it was given Hamilton only needed to finish in the top five to clinch it regardless of what Vettel did, had effectively been decided by a collision.

"I positioned my car perfectly and it felt a bit odd to be hit by the guy I'm fighting with for the championship" Lewis Hamilton

OK, in the circumstances it wasn't quite Alain Prost and Ayrton Senna at Suzuka 1989/1990 or Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve with Michael Schumacher in 1994 and '97, but it was a moment that would have been far more controversial had there really been a championship at stake.

The stewards noted the incident, but neither investigated nor took action on what was a racing incident.

Hamilton suggested it was deliberate over the radio, while Vettel, after the race, simply declared it to be "irrelevant". He focused on Hamilton's title, magnanimously congratulating him with a hug in the post-race TV interview pen.

"I knew that I couldn't win the race, clearly, but I was [thinking] 'you know what, I'm going to have the best race I can possibly have from wherever I am'," said Hamilton.

"I left a lot of room, so I wonder why the dude behind that I was fighting touched me.

"We're great drivers, he's a four-time world champion, it's quite easy not to hit each other, but in the midst of things it can also be quite easy to touch. So I don't really care and I don't feel like analysing it."

Even when forced to analyse it on Sky Sports F1's post-race coverage, Hamilton held back when seemingly on the brink of emphatically blaming Vettel. In the end, given the clash didn't affect the outcome of the title, both could get away with glossing over it.

"I feel like I positioned my car perfectly through those two corners and it felt a bit odd to be hit by the guy I'm fighting with for the championship," was as far as Hamilton would go. It was clear both felt some grievance.

But the stewards were right. Hamilton had been bold and attacking but not to excess, and Vettel would certainly not have hit him intentionally given he also came off badly from the incident. It all stemmed from Verstappen's slightly slow exit from Turn 3, itself a consequence of the battle through Turns 1 and 2. That's racing.

Any realistic chance of Vettel, who needed to finish at least second to have any hope of staying mathematically in the hunt, extending the fight for the championship was gone. But it did set up a fascinating 'battle' between the pair as they recovered from lowly positions.

Vettel pitted for a new front wing and rejoined 19th, courtesy of being able to make it to the pits more quickly than Hamilton, who was dead last and 23s behind his rival. From here, it was a tale of two independent recoveries.

Vettel's started quickly. Now on the soft Pirellis, he picked up places for free when Carlos Sainz Jr (after a spin) and Pascal Wehrlein stopped before Daniel Ricciardo retired with an MGU-K problem.

On lap 12 of 71, he dispatched Felipe Massa into the Turn 4/5 chicane despite the Williams driver going mighty late on the brakes and forcing the Ferrari wide at the exit of the left-hander element, to run 15th.

Pierre Gasly, on lap 16, Romain Grosjean, on lap 18, Brendon Hartley, on lap 21 and Stoffel Vandoorne, on lap 23, all followed in quick succession to put Vettel up to 11th. That became 10th when Nico Hulkenberg retired with an ERS problem on lap 25.

By now, Hamilton had climbed to... last. Frustrated behind the inconveniently quick Renault of Sainz and Wehrlein's Sauber, he asked whether there was damage to the floor. There was, and he didn't seem especially sharp at this stage of the race as he struggled on soft Pirellis when super-softs might have been the better choice. As Mercedes motorsport boss Toto Wolff put it, "half of his right diffuser was ripped off" in the lap one clash.

After 26 laps of running last, Hamilton finally made his way past Sainz on the main straight to run 17th (he had picked up two places from the demises of Ricciardo's Red Bull and Hulkenberg's Renault). But his gap to Vettel had only grown to just over 26s.

The deployment of the virtual safety car on lap 32 to clear up Hartley's smouldering Toro Rosso triggered a flurry of pitstops, including ones for Vettel and Hamilton.

By then, Vettel had already passed Fernando Alonso into Turn 1 and picked up another place thanks to Marcus Ericsson's stop. That left Vettel eighth, with Hamilton down in 16th. This big difference in track position made all the difference when it came to the divergence of their races.

Hamilton picked off Grosjean, Wehrlein, Gasly and Ericsson in short order to run 12th by lap 50. During that time, Vettel had passed only Kevin Magnussen into Turn 1 and was working his way onto the back of Sergio Perez's sixth-placed Force India.

By lap 25, Hamilton had climbed to... last

The gap between Vettel and Hamilton was now up to 41s thanks to a combination of Hamilton being in slower traffic and being lapped by the leading cars and the fact Vettel was on ultra-softs and Hamilton super-softs.

The closing stages were all about Vettel working through the bottom half of the top six. None of Perez, Lance Stroll or Esteban Ocon put up much of a fight - although Vettel's surprise lunge on Perez into Turn 5 was a fantastic pass. It allowed him to finish fourth, 1m10s behind the leader.

Hamilton, meanwhile, worked his way through Vandoorne and Massa into Turn 1 to run 10th. The message from the pitwall was that eighth was possible, but there was one obstacle in the way: Fernando Alonso.

The McLaren driver was hassling Magnussen when Hamilton caught their battle with 13 laps to go. After a couple of looks, he launched an attack with just three laps remaining.

Some said Hamilton's race, condemned to working his way through from the back with car damage, wasn't worthy of a champion. But this battle with another great champion was a thrilling one, coming to a head when Hamilton attempted to go around the outside into Turn 1. Alonso was having none of it, contesting the apex and forcing the world champion in waiting to back off and save himself for another attempt.

When that came, it initially looked like it would be a repeat of the previous try. Alonso got on the brakes late and hard, consolidating his position through the Turn 2/3 left/right. But this compromised his exit and allowed Hamilton a run towards Turn 4 on the outside line.

The Mercedes was seemingly well ahead into the corner, but Alonso extracted every iota of braking force to come back on the inside line, leaving Hamilton just enough room to complete the move into the Turn 5 right hander. With a quick move to the right to cover Alonso into the Turn 6 double-apex hairpin, Hamilton had a hard-fought ninth position.

Alonso was at his bullish best out of the car as well after the race, declaring that Hamilton's run to this year's title was "too easy", and that with Renault engines next year, McLaren intends to be more than a midfield obstacle the four-time champion only encounters when recovering through the field.

The prospect of the Spaniard, who Hamilton admits should be more than a two-time champion by now, back in contention at the front next year along with a rejuvenated Red Bull and Ferrari coming back for more, paints a mouthwatering picture for 2018.

For now though, the less potent 2017 Alonso/McLaren threat was dealt with, and Hamilton hassled Magnussen to the flag for that eighth place. But the Dane stayed resolute and prevented the championship winner from grabbing what was at one stage the best possible result.

No matter for Hamilton, who was crowned thanks to Vettel - who finished a minute ahead after their very different recoveries - only managing fourth.

In the final analysis, Vettel made 10 on-track passes on his way from 19th to fourth and Hamilton eight (two of them on Wehrlein) to go from 20th to ninth. But both enlivened the race and at least partly made up for their early exit from the lead battle.

In between the top two and Vettel was Kimi Raikkonen, who spent the early stages of the race stuck behind Perez before capitalising on running longer on the ultra-softs, and more importantly the timing of the virtual safety car, to take third.

Vettel had been 26.895s behind Raikkonen after his early stop, and eventually crossed the line 16.071s behind - an average gain of 0.155s per lap to a driver who spent the last 50 laps in clear air (save for the odd bit of lapping). Even with the caveat that Raikkonen had less of an imperative to push than Vettel, that shows how good Vettel's recovery was.

Up front, Verstappen's run to victory was very straightforward. He led all 71 laps and was only denied fastest lap by Vettel's charge. With Red Bull and Renault's form already on an upward curve, the high altitude of the track reduced air density by approximately 23% and forced teams to run maximum downforce. This was very good news for Red Bull, and even its relative top speed was better than usual.

I knew the car was good, but I didn't know that it was going to be this good Max Verstappen

At the end of the first lap, Verstappen was 1.737s clear of Bottas. By the time they both pitted at the end of lap 32 under the virtual safety car to change from ultra-softs to soft, Verstappen's advantage had grown to just over eight seconds. Over the 30 racing laps in between, Verstappen had inched away at 0.236s per lap. All Mercedes could do was keep Bottas out there and hope for the Red Bull to use up its tyres quickly.

Bottas was 7.6s behind when the VSC ended on lap 33 and, with the Mercedes pitwall closely watching the gap, Verstappen started to edge away again.

It quickly became clear that there was going to be no battle for victory and both were able to take it easy during the second half of the race, leading to Verstappen's apologetic struggle to do so. By the finish, Bottas was 19.678s behind.

The only real drama for Verstappen was the start.

"With the pre-start limiter, I was a bit too high and I almost touched the limit so my start was not great, but actually because of that I was in a good position because I had a good slipstream from Sebastian.

"I went on the outside and I was like 'I'm going to try around the outside and see what happens'. I just saw we had a little bit of a touch [with Vettel] into Turn 2 but luckily nothing happened there.

"From there onwards, I could do my own race, I was pulling away every single lap. I knew the car was good, but I didn't know that it was going to be this good in the race."

As for Bottas, he didn't have the pace to challenge. Given Hamilton didn't rate his own chances of going for victory that highly, it's fair to say this was as good as it was going to get for the Finn on a circuit where he was closer to Hamilton than at any other point in the second half of the season. But it's hard to escape the conclusion that Hamilton would have made a better fist of it.

After all, this has been Hamilton's season - arguably his greatest season. He can do things the merely very good can't hope to achieve, and the details of a difficult day at Mexico City are already fading into the footnotes of history as Hamilton's status as a four times world champion is etched into grand prix legend.