The data that shows Norris could've won in Mexico without Verstappen's meddling

“He deserves it." On another bitter, contentious day of what for so long was a feel-good Formula 1 season, Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc congratulating his team-mate Carlos Sainz for a thoroughly well-deserved victory in the 2024 Mexico Grand Prix was a refreshing tonic.

The Scuderia had come into race day in the Mexican capital as the firm favourite. On the long runs in FP2 – around the unusual caveats of the Pirelli tyre test, which nevertheless meant for once fuel loads were known and equal – the red team had looked devastatingly fast.

On medium tyres, Leclerc lapped a second quicker than Mercedes’ best time via Lewis Hamilton. The Silver Arrows squad wasn’t to be a victory contender and after he’d wildly oversteered his way to qualifying fourth, Leclerc didn’t look like much of one either.

“Sometimes you get into the car and the feeling is perfect and sometimes you just have to work a lot harder for it and that's what happened this weekend,” Leclerc would later reflect post-race. “I was just not fast enough.”

Not so for Sainz, who produced scintillating form across the weekend. On the hard tyre long-runs in FP1 that suddenly had rare importance because of what was going to come in FP2, he led the best of Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull by over a second too. Then, when it really mattered in Q3, he found enough to beat previous pacesetter Lando Norris, Red Bull’s tenacious world champion Max Verstappen, and F1’s usually best qualifier in the other SF-24.

“I had a very good feeling coming into the weekend,” said Sainz, who was delighted to score an F1 career win – his fourth in total – in front of his mother for the first time.

Sainz celebrates his near-perfect Mexico GP performance

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Verstappen had joined him on the front row. This being Mexico – the scene of the Dutchman’s brilliant double overtake on the Mercedes cars here in 2021, which was so pivotal for his eventual title-clinching that year – it seemed almost inevitable something would happen at the start.

The thin air of Mexico City’s high altitude might reduce the slipstream effect, but the run down the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez’s main straight from pole to the first braking zone remains 768 metres. And then there’s the low-grip track surface.

“Whenever there's low grip, the Red Bull tends to start really well,” Sainz explained of how he lost the lead when the lights went out.

The Spaniard in isolation felt he “didn't get a good start” and with Verstappen’s excellent one, the Red Bull was soon powering alongside the Ferrari. From third, Norris was then swarming with a double slipstream, with Leclerc also gaining just behind when the McLaren stayed just following Verstappen.

The Red Bull’s prowess in the fast corners of the middle sector here – plus its ongoing slipperiness in a straight line – might’ve provided a handy advantage to Verstappen. But, at the start of lap nine, Sainz forced the issue with aplomb

As they braked for the first corner, Verstappen had got his wheels and nose ahead, with Sainz then trying to brave it around the outside. Everyone knew what was coming. Verstappen ran Sainz wide and the Ferrari was forced to cut Turn 2 – getting ahead but rapidly handing the position back. All so Austin.

“He was very clever to give up the position in lap one,” reflected Ferrari team boss Fred Vasseur. “And it's also the proof that he is very self-confident in this situation.”

Sainz was confident because of Ferrari’s early weekend strength, plus how it had secured a 1-2 in the USA, but at this stage he had to be patient. Because just five corners after he’d handed Verstappen the lead back, the safety car was called out due to an incident that had happened in their wake at Turn 1.

Sainz has to concede the lead to Verstappen for cutting Turn 2, but trouble unfolded behind them as Tsunoda is tagged into the wall

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

In the pack, Pierre Gasly creeping left as it arrived en masse for the right-hander led to a minor “lucky escape” brush with Alex Albon. But it was the Williams driver’s own tiny subsequent drift left in reaction that had the bigger consequence, as it meant Yuki Tsunoda shooting his RB down the track’s far left was in sudden danger. The RB hit Albon’s left-rear with its right-rear and was pitched into a spin – putting Tsunoda out immediately. Albon, his left-front corner smashed, made it quite a long way down the second straight before he pulled over.

The race was therefore neutralised until lap seven of 71 – in large part thanks to a delay in removing Albon’s car, but there was also plenty of debris to be swept away from the critical approach to this track’s heaviest braking point.

Verstappen waited until he’d traversed the Turn 13 hairpin in the Foro Sol stadium before lighting the race up again – successfully gapping Sainz by 0.7s to run unthreatened down the main straight as green flag conditions resumed. The next time by his lead was up to 1.1s and Sainz was initially denied DRS.

The Red Bull’s prowess in the fast corners of the middle sector here – plus its ongoing slipperiness in a straight line – might’ve provided a handy advantage to Verstappen. But, at the start of lap nine, Sainz forced the issue with aplomb.

With Verstappen’s energy deployment settings suddenly a focus, Sainz dived to the inside at Turn 1. He’d entered the straight with a 0.8s gap to close, but DRS and Ferrari’s own much improved aerodynamic efficiency meant he could attack – extra secure that Verstappen had more to lose in collision with anyone but Norris. It was still late and on the edge, but Sainz was able to stay on track at Turn 1’s exit.

“I got a really good tow on DRS,” Sainz explained. “But I saw that I was probably going to be a bit too far back. But then right in the last 100m, I felt like I had a good momentum and I've been feeling very confident braking into Turn 1 this weekend. I just went for it.”

But Sainz’s lead still wasn’t secure, as he’d gone a touch deep and Verstappen just never gives up. Sainz therefore decided to aggressively chop onto the Turns 2/3 kerbs – albeit with a handy dab of right lock going through the left element to ensure he did not risk a track limits sanction.

Having got back ahead of Verstappen, Sainz kept the Red Bull driver in check before pulling away

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Sainz pulled out a 0.7s lead by the start of the next tour, but his efforts to keep Verstappen behind had meant Norris was suddenly a factor again – the Briton gaining 1.6s on his title rival on lap nine and the three lapping almost nose-to-tail.

As Verstappen fumed about his energy deployment, Norris closed in. On the run down the main straight on lap 10 he gained as the Red Bull again had to harvest battery power, then, armed with DRS a second time, he was in position to send an attacking move to the outside for Turn 4. The Red Bull driver predictably defended the inside line. Hard.

The lines were the same as Austin Turn 12 and again Verstappen would have Norris off. But there was so much different this time.

The McLaren driver felt he “didn't need to let Max through” and so took up the racing line for Turn 7. Here, Verstappen shoved his Red Bull to the inside and, yet again, both went off

As they braked and turned, Norris’s front wheels were clearly ahead at the apex. Therefore, under the current ‘Driving Standards Guidelines’ – relevant until at least the Qatar round in early December – he was entitled to be “given room”. That was not forthcoming.

Verstappen opened his steering just enough to run Norris off the road – although this time the Red Bull remained within track limits. Swinging the Austin comparison back to the similarities, Norris got ahead and stayed ahead by running off track – even actually passing Sainz before quickly letting the Ferrari back ahead.

As the leader scampered through Turn 6 clear, Verstappen was right with Norris again. The McLaren driver felt he “didn't need to let Max through” and so took up the racing line for Turn 7. Here, Verstappen shoved his Red Bull to the inside and, yet again, both went off.

For the second time in a week, Leclerc gleefully sailed through to gain two spots – ending the lap facing a 1.9s deficit to Sainz and with Verstappen one second behind.

Verstappen's two moves on Norris earned him two 10s penalties - while also letting Leclerc fly by the pair of them

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

The airwaves were soon lighting up with differing opinions on the clashes. Then came the timing screen messages regarding two separate investigations.

The stewards penalised Verstappen for the Turn 4 incident first – slapping him with a 10s penalty to be served at his pitstop. It wasn’t clear initially if this sanction was to cover both infractions given the most stringent penalty in last week’s ugliness between the title contenders was half that.

But, after having to follow Fernando Alonso’s pitlane retirement from his 397th F1 start and Sergio Perez’s savage battle with Liam Lawson, the stewards eventually made another call – giving Verstappen another 10s penalty for leaving the track and gaining a lasting advantage in the Turn 7 divebomb.

This announcement came in on lap 19 – by which time the state of the race looked rather different.

Leclerc was 2.6s off Sainz’s lead. He’d got the deficit he initially faced having been elevated to second down to 1.1s with a series of laps in the low 1m21s while Sainz stayed in that bracket’s mid-to-high range. But then classic Mexico City problems strangled the lead fight.
On lap 14, Leclerc had to catch a big Turn 6 slide with his tyres overheating, which cost him 0.7s. Then he was ordered to increase his lift and coast to help engine and brake cooling on lap 18 and so the gap between them ballooned.

“I don't want to give technical details,” said Vasseur – referring to the considerable cooling challenge the Ferrari cars were facing in this event. “It's a lot about management, the cooling on everything, and it's not an easy exercise and sometimes for details you are on the right side or not. But Carlos did a very good job from the beginning, he was also in clean air on the race. And it's also much easier to manage in this situation.”

But Leclerc went further, saying it was “all about trying to manage the temperatures, which was quite difficult” as he trailed his team-mate. He added: “Quickly I understood that it would be a lot trickier with all the management I had to do.”

Leclerc's hunt of Sainz was stalled by managing engine and brake temperatures

Photo by: Ferrari

At the same point on lap 19, Verstappen – still ahead of Norris even after the pair of penalties had appeared – was 3.1s adrift of Leclerc, with Norris trailing by 1.7s.

“The message we gave to Lando was, 'We have pace, if we can pass him, let's do it', because we knew at some stage that we could compete with Ferrari and we were losing time behind Max,” McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said of the stage Norris spent tracking Verstappen. “But Lando knew very well this overtaking needed to happen in a safe way because for us, we are competing on both fronts.”

They would stay in this order until Verstappen pitted on lap 26 – having complained the mediums all the leaders had started on were “not holding on”. Here, Norris followed Leclerc by 6.8s and Sainz by nearly double that.

That by the flag Sainz won by only 4.7s over the McLaren and his team-mate – in classic Leclerc spectacular style – vanquished himself, it all left Norris’s squad wondering if the Verstappen controversy had cost another 2024 win shot

With Red Bull having had to wait 20s before touching Verstappen’s car, his podium hopes were gone at this point. He rejoined 15th and climbed back to sixth by the end – unable to make any impression on the long-squabbling Mercedes cars ahead.

Much of this had to do with how Red Bull team boss Christian Horner later stated, “we just didn’t have the same pace” because “Max had no grip” and “we didn’t feel we could switch the tyres on” when it came to the hards.

Not so for Norris. His service to exchange mediums for the white-walled rubber came four tours after Verstappen’s on lap 30. Although the undercut’s power wasn’t massive here, Ferrari covered this off on successive laps – with Leclerc coming in for hards the next time by and Sainz doing likewise one lap after that.

When Sainz had rejoined there was still just over half the race to go, with his lead sitting at 8.8s over Leclerc and 13.5s over Norris.

Ferrari covered off the undercut attempt from Norris to preserve its 1-2 on the road

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

That by the flag Sainz won by only 4.7s over the McLaren and his team-mate – in classic Leclerc spectacular style – vanquished himself, it all left Norris’s squad wondering if the Verstappen controversy had cost another 2024 win shot.

“As soon as he got clear of Verstappen, he showed he had very competitive pace,” Stella later concluded. “And in the second stint, he proved that the pace was as fast as Ferrari. So, in hindsight, when I look at the incidents in the first part of the race there is a little bit of disappointment because without those I think Lando could have fought for the victory.”

Norris got second by pressing on after Leclerc post-pitstop. The gap between the initially held around five seconds for the next 10 laps, but then a string of then fastest laps through tours 45 and 46 meant it began to fall. It was here that Sainz complained “we are pushing too hard”, which Vasseur batted away.

“Behind Charles,” he explained, “the risk was there and we were not able to do it and he understood quickly the situation when we gave him the delta.”

By the end of lap 49, Norris was getting under four seconds off Leclerc – and 10s from the lead. Here, a new challenge emerged. Sainz by this point was just about to lap a gaggle of cars – during which Leclerc was able to temporarily shrink the gap to the other Ferrari ahead. But when Williams’s Franco Colapinto had emerged from his stop just before, a bigger traffic hindrance had begun.

Norris couldn’t easily overcome the Williams on its fresh mediums and so Colapinto ran between the Briton and Leclerc for seven laps. Eventually, with McLaren frustrated by the situation enough to tell Norris to “use some battery to get the blue flags”, Norris got close enough to trigger enough warnings that Colapinto obeyed. McLaren’s Will Joseph insisted “Colapinto has been a bit naughty – push and hold overtake” as Norris finally flashed by.

Once free of the Williams, Norris had to lap Lawson, while ahead Leclerc was struggling with Lance Stroll’s Aston Martin. The time spent lapping this group left Vasseur feeling Leclerc overall “lost three seconds with the guys who were blue-flagged and we lost also a lot of temperature into the tyres at this stage”.

Lapping traffic saw Leclerc lose vital time to Norris in the late fight for second

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

Once they were both clear of the traffic at the end of lap 59, Leclerc’s gap was down to just 1.2s. And Norris kept coming. He reached DRS threat on lap 60 and two laps later was just 0.6s adrift as they exited the stadium.

As he rounded the famous, if rather neutered these days, Peraltada, Leclerc was trying to “have the best exit possible”. “I could see that he was very close out of that corner,” Leclerc added. “I lost the rear and then you forget about Lando and you just hope that you are going to take it back. I had one oversteer and then when I recovered from that oversteer, I had an oversteer from the other side and then I was like, ‘F***’. Oh, sorry! Oh, no, oh no! I don't want to join Max!”

At the time of writing, the FIA is assessing whether or not Leclerc’s swearing needs a full stewards’ investigation for a possible breach of Article 12.2.1k of the FIA’s International Sporting Code, around which Verstappen’s press conference language had earned him a community service punishment back in Singapore.

The result in the second stint had been that Norris enjoyed an average lap time advantage of 0.231s each time compared with Sainz. And he managed that while catching and passing Leclerc, plus the traffic issue

That is a depressing way to cap a stunning few moments of F1 action – such were Leclerc’s abilities to catch a slide that had massive crash seared right through it.

As he roared onto the main straight, Norris was suddenly second (although Leclerc broke the timing beam first by a whisker in the run-off) – 8.5s from Sainz. He chipped that down over the remaining nine tours, while Leclerc’s attention quickly turned to pitting to attempt to capture the fastest lap bonus point.

He got this with a 1m18.336s on the last lap, with third place secure. Leclerc is now 71 points off Verstappen’s 362 leading total, with Norris 47-points back on his main rival. But, could Norris really have beaten Sainz last Sunday?

There is quite the question in the paddock over just how well the McLaren comes alive in final stints in 2024, with Vasseur wondering “if it's related to the level of fuel, to the compound, to whatever”, but offering no firm suggestions.

Norris caught and passed Leclerc with McLaren's superior late-race pace - but could he have done the same with Sainz?

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

The result in the second stint had been that Norris enjoyed an average lap time advantage of 0.231s each time compared with Sainz. And he managed that while catching and passing Leclerc, plus the traffic issue. In all, he gained 10s back on the deficit he’d faced pre-pitstop.

But the biggest indicator that this should surely go down as a lost Norris win shot is how well the MCL38s coped with the cooling problem here.

“For me, this is the first year I have been in Mexico and never heard the word cooling as a hot topic,” said Stella. “We didn't need to do any pace control to control any cooling and temperatures.”

That the Ferraris did suggests that, had Norris been able to stay with Sainz from the restart, even with the Spaniard’s clean air advantage, he’d had have been right in what would have surely been a very classy fight.

Sainz triumphs and even gets to join in with the McLaren celebrations

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images