Lando Norris dominated Formula 1’s Mexican Grand Prix to seize the drivers’ championship lead as Max Verstappen survived a clash with Lewis Hamilton to finish third.
Having taken a commanding pole position, Norris controlled the grand prix, holding the lead at the start, once Charles Leclerc - one of two drivers, alongside Verstappen to take to the run-off - backed off and handed him the lead back on the run to Turn 3.
Norris went untroubled thereafter, with Leclerc avoiding any penalty for his Turn 1 shortcut and fending off a late-race charge from Verstappen to finish second, his best grand prix finish since Monaco.
Leclerc was aided by a penultimate-lap virtual safety car for Carlos Sainz’s stricken Williams, which effectively called off Leclerc's and Verstappen’s tense fight for second place.
The race did resume, but only by the time the duo had cleared the most likely overtaking zones on the final lap.
For Norris, though, this was a hugely impressive and dominant victory - he finished 30.3 seconds clear of Leclerc - one that vaults him back into the championship lead that he lost back in Saudi Arabia in April.
His team-mate Oscar Piastri has struggled all weekend to match him, qualifying seventh while Norris took pole.
He lost further ground at the race start as he was shuffled from seventh to ninth, behind the second Red Bull of Yuki Tsunoda.
Piastri cleared Tsunoda after 11 laps and then made a good spate of late-race progress as fast work from his McLaren pitcrew helped him jump Kimi Antonelli in the pitlane. That was followed later by a bold move at Turn 1 on George Russell to claim fifth place.
Despite pressuring Ollie Bearman in the closing laps, Piastri could not pass the Haas driver, who had a magnificent run to fourth.
It means Piastri now trails Norris by a single point ahead of the final four rounds.
Verstappen and Hamilton clash
Hamilton and Verstappen were third and fourth after the frenetic opening lap, but the duo came to blows on lap six of 71 when Verstappen went for a lunge down the inside of Turn 1.
They banged wheels mid-corner, and the fight continued down into Turn 3, where Hamilton had to skip across the grass to rejoin the track.
But Hamilton was punished with a 10-second time penalty for leaving the track and gaining an advantage at Turn 3, while no further investigation was deemed necessary for their Turn 1 run-in.
That penalty torpedoed Hamilton’s podium chances as he finished in a lowly eighth place.
That skirmish initially cost Verstappen a place to an opportunistic Bearman, who managed to pass both Verstappen and Russell, to put himself in unlikely podium contention.
But Verstappen was able to make the one-stop strategy work (running mediums in the first stint then swapping to softs) and was elevated to third as those in front of him, including Bearman, had to make two pitstops.
Bearman fourth for Haas
That killed what at one stage was looking like a maiden Haas podium, but Bearman was still able to hold off Piastri to finish in fourth - matching Haas’s best result in F1.
The Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli and Russell finished sixth and seventh, with the team inverting their positions in the final stint, as was promised when Antonelli made way for Russell during the middle stint.
Russell was furious with how long it took Mercedes to make that team orders call in the middle stint, but did comply with the late-race team order once Piastri had passed him.
Behind Hamilton, Esteban Ocon completed a double-points finish for Haas in ninth place.
Gabriel Bortoleto pulled off a late-race move on his 2024 Formula 2 title rival Isack Hadjar to secure 10th and the final points-paying position.
Tsunoda struggled for pace throughout the race, ultimately ending up empty-handed despite a late move on Hadjar to claim 11th.
Sainz had a fraught run via a clash with Liam Lawson at Turn 1 on the opening lap (which ended Lawson’s race) and two penalties for speeding in the pitlane - the first a five-second time penalty, then a drive-through penalty for his second offence.
He ended up retiring and triggering that late-race virtual safety car for his stricken Williams in the stadium section.
