There has rarely been a shortage of drama in this topsy-turvy Formula 1 season, with no truly boring weekends to speak of since the weather turned warm, but Sunday's Mexico City Grand Prix stood out, thanks to chaos up and down the grid. It seemed that every lap had a different combination of drivers trying to ram each other off the road, all while sending aggrieved radio messages like they were going out of style. By the end of the 71 laps, almost every driver had a bone to pick with someone, whether that was an opponent, a teammate, or a pit wall.
The 20th race of the season started with Yuki Tsunoda and Alex Albon making contact before the first turn, landing both drivers with a Did Not Finish, and only got sillier from there. Sergio Pérez continued to be down real bad in what surely has to be his last home race on a top team—it has to be, right? Right?—drawing more notice for calling Liam Lawson an idiot after a scuffle on the track. (Lawson also flipped off Pérez on track; the New Zealander has been really good at pissing off the old guard, following last week's entanglement with Fernando Alonso.) Teammates Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc had a frosty post-race moment, as Ferrari had Leclerc hang back during the race in order to not slow Sainz down, only for Lando Norris to take advantage of the reduced pace and pass the Monegasque driver. Ferrari's plan worked, but only for Sainz, who won the day, followed by Norris in second. Leclerc couldn't fight back against the McLaren and finished third, although with the fastest lap.
However, no one made more of an impact on Sunday for both this specific Grand Prix, and the perhaps futile hope of a title race, than Max Verstappen. The driver's championship leader has been in a noticeable slump ever since winning the Spanish Grand Prix back in late June; he's only qualified on pole once since then, and six different drivers have won in Verstappen's absence at the top of the podium. (He also had a pretty funny vulgarity saga in that time.) There are plenty of reasons for why a driver who won seven of the first 10 races this season has now gone 0-for-the-next-10; the car is wonky, the rest of the field improved, Verstappen himself has made some errors in qualifying. Whatever the underlying reasons, though, two things appear true: Max Verstappen is not happy with how this season has gone, and Max Verstappen will do whatever it takes to win the title anyway.
These two things appeared to work in tandem on Sunday. Despite starting in second place behind Sainz, who notched two incredible laps in qualifying to secure pole position, Verstappen actually took over first place off a much better start than the Spaniard. The aforementioned Tsunoda-Albon crash brought out a safety car, so Verstappen cruised behind Bernd Mayländer's green pace-setter for six laps before the restart. However, it became evident soon after that restart that Sainz had significantly more pace; the Ferrari on aggregate had been the fastest car in practice and qualifying, after all. It took two laps but Sainz did eventually overtake Verstappen, and this is where the mayhem started.
On lap 10, Norris had caught up to Verstappen enough to make a move into turn four. Norris went outside into that turn and seemed to give Verstappen enough room to go on the inside, but the Red Bull driver pushed into Norris's space on the ensuing turn and seemed to ever-so-slightly shift even further right on the exit. Luckily Norris was able to avoid the collision, going over the grass to cut the corner safely before slotting back into the race in second place, ahead of Verstappen.
To me, that was a pretty clear penalty for Verstappen, but it got worse almost immediately. Perhaps assuming that Norris would give the place back in reaction to what happened in Austin last week, Verstappen approached turn eight as if he were the only driver in the vicinity. Since Norris did not cede the position, Verstappen forced his title rival off the track once more, having pushed Norris out so far wide that Verstappen himself also went off the track. Somehow, these two moves did not result in a collision, but that doesn't mean they weren't dangerous gambits from a driver famous for them.
This was vintage Verstappen, and I don't mean that in a good way. Often, Verstappen uses the F1 rules as suggestions, and he has no qualms in forcing his opponents to make an important split-second decision: Either back off when the Dutchman is making an overly aggressive move, or take each other out of the race. Sometimes, the other driver complies; see the DNF for Norris and the subsequent limp to a fifth-place finish for Verstappen back at Austria in June, or Lewis Hamilton going extra wide to avoid a crash at Brazil in 2021. Most of the time, though, the other drivers on the grid deploy self-preservation mode, like Norris did on Sunday, in hopes that the stewards step in and penalize Verstappen for his aggression. He often seems to skate by without punishment, though, and so it wouldn't have been all that shocking to see it happen again here.
However, Verstappen didn't avoid penalties in Mexico, and it's in part due to last week's kerfuffle with the very same Norris in Austin. The two championship contenders tangled at the end of the race, with Norris going off the track and passing Verstappen. He did not give that place back and incurred a five-second penalty for his troubles, but there were questions as to why Verstappen himself avoided a penalty, as it looked like he had forced Norris out by going off the track himself. It was a mess, one that even fellow drivers were confused about, and it left a stain on the race and the hunt for the title.
After the Austin Grand Prix, the FIA told the drivers that it would review and tweak driver guidelines as a result of the Verstappen-Norris situation, perhaps before the end of this season. With that microscope on wheel-to-wheel racing and pushing drivers off the track, Verstappen's double whammy of questionable actions was basically inviting a penalty. There's an argument to be made that both moves resulting in 10-second penalties was overly harsh, and that the FIA was simply sending a message. That might be true—I think the turn-four incident should have likely been a more traditional five-second penalty—but Verstappen can't play the aggrieved party here. He didn't seem to be all that mad about his decision to focus on ruining Norris's race, and didn't even acknowledge that he might have gone too far in his defense: "We didn't touch, so, just racing hard."
Even though he was punished for breaking the rules, it's still shitty to watch Verstappen's decision-making process in real time. Since he no longer has a car favored to win the title, he has shifted into full-on defense mode for his slowly dwindling lead. It's a shame, and also maybe a useless strategy, as Norris has almost no chance of catching up in time; the McLaren driver would have to outscore Verstappen by 47 points in four races and two sprints, a feat probably not doable without one or even two Verstappen DNFs. Of course, if Verstappen were to DNF in the process of taking Norris out, as he almost did twice in Mexico, then that's all the better for Red Bull, particularly since the team appears to be out of the Constructors' Championship (shout out to Pérez for his ineptitude).
All that matters now for Verstappen is to finish the season ahead of Norris at any cost, and if that comes with a sixth-place finish, then so be it. If the gap keeps shrinking, thanks to McLaren's technological supremacy and Norris's recently improved performance, then it will be down to the FIA and its stewards to keep a close eye on Verstappen and penalize him for any Verstappen-esque behavior he may exhibit between now and the season finale in Abu Dhabi.
The drivers themselves appear fed up with this whole situation, one that has been on their minds even as far back as 2019, if not further. After Sunday's race, George Russell said that 19 of the 20 drivers are in favor of updating the guidelines as soon as possible, and definitely before the season ends. This is pure speculation on my part, but I have a pretty good guess at who the one contradicting driver might be.
Verstappen is a historically talented driver, but it's fair to say that a lot of his success is due to his ability to step as close to the line as possible without crossing over. Even when he does cross over, he's banking on leniency, whether due to incompetence or some more nefarious reason, and that strategy has made him a three-time champion. If the Mexico City Grand Prix was the FIA's limit, though, then the rest of this season could get real interesting, as Verstappen is forced to drive like everyone else lest he face enough punishment to throw away his season-long lead and the championship.
Correction (4:25 p.m. ET): Driver Liam Lawson is a New Zealander, not an Australian.
