Eight things we learned from the Mexico City Grand Prix

At the US GP there were unfortunate scenes when countless Sergio Perez fans felt the need to boo Max Verstappen on the podium, and the Dutch driver was shadowed by bodyguards in Mexico to make absolutely sure of his safety. Ugh.

Naturally the three-time champion responded in the only way he knows how: by winning. Verstappen started a lowly (by his standards) third on the grid after Ferrari aced qualifying, but by the first corner he'd drafted past both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz and into the lead of the race.

After that the win never looked in doubt, with the 25-year-old expertly fending off Leclerc at the post-red flag restart despite having no one to slipstream up the straight.

That's 16 wins for Max this season: no one has ever won that many grands prix in a single campaign. Dominant.

Get this man a race-winning car, stat. Norris's weekend got off to a dreadful start when he failed to set a lap in qualifying, ensuring he'd start way back in P17 and face an uphill battle for points.

Challenge accepted. Slowly but surely the McLaren driver began picking off backmarkers, but he dropped back to P14 when the red flag gave everyone a 'free' pit stop to fit fresh tyres.

Next challenge accepted. The Briton made his mediums work perfectly right from the off, scything past everyone in his path and even having the pace to force teammate Oscar Piastri to move aside and let him by.

Lando crossed the line in P5, capping his performance with a sublime switchback on George Russell out of Turn 5. Naturally he was voted 'Driver of the Day' for his efforts.

Like, really back! The Aussie's second comeback of the season in Austin (remember he broke his hand at the Dutch GP and missed five races) was underwhelming as he struggled to P15, but in Mexico he was very much on form again. It's been a while, huh?

With his AlphaTauri showing decent pace (for once), Ricciardo somehow stuck it on the second row alongside Verstappen in qualifying, and rather than dropping like a stone from there the 34-year-old got his elbows out in the opening stages. Heck, it took Lewis Hamilton 11 laps to get past him.

The timing of the red flag stoppage cost him a chance of holding onto fifth place, but coming home in P7 was still a mega haul of points for a team that’s struggled to trouble the top 10 this season. Has D-Ric finally rediscovered his mojo?

Ricciardo's result couldn't have come at a worse time for Sergio Perez. Outqualified by the man who many think could replace him at Red Bull in 2024, the Mexican was desperate for a good result in front of his home fans on race day.

It didn't happen. Perez got a great start initially, drafting his way into a three-car battle for the lead on the dive down into Turn 1. But with Charles Leclerc caught in a Red Bull sandwich, Perez was vaulted into the air and out of the race. Disaster.

He later said he'd given “everything chasing that victory”, which you can understand with tens of thousands of locals cheering him on from the stands. But that’s yet another DNF and Red Bull can’t afford to run just one competitive driver forever…

And at this rate he isn't going to finish runner-up in the championship...

... this guy is. There's no doubt about it: Lewis Hamilton is in red hot form right now, even if his last two zero-pointers (one crash, one disqualification) don't show it.

Mercedes didn't quite get it right in quali, but after starting P6 on the grid Hamilton finally started making inroads on the Ferraris ahead after clearing Ricciardo's AlphaTauri.

Carlos Sainz was dispatched with the undercut, and after the red flag he used his fresh mediums to wrestle his way past Charles Leclerc on hards for P2. Everyone thought his tyres would fall off the cliff before the end of the race and that Leclerc might get him back, but some "sweet finesse" (Lewis's choice of words, not ours) ensured another podium (and fastest lap bonus point) was his.

He's now only 18 points behind Perez with three grands prix and a sprint race to go. Reckon he can do it?

Qualifying was ultra close on Saturday, with the top eight drivers split by only half a second in the final Q3 showdown. All of the teams were struggling to get their tyres into the right temperature (the Mexico track is more than 2km above sea level and always unpredictable) but it was Ferrari that came out on top with a stunning front row lock-out.

This was a shock to everyone… including Ferrari. Leclerc himself admitted it was a “surprise” over the team radio, having gone almost eight tenths quicker than his best effort in Q2. It was Leclerc’s second pole position in a row and 22nd overall, although he’s still only taken the chequered flag five times since his first win in Belgium four years ago.

He hasn’t lost sight of the bigger picture though. “We have had enough poles,” he observed. “We need to do better in races.”

Or maybe that should be past tense: Aston’s season has imploded. The team caught the entire grid on the back foot when it started the season with the second fastest car, but it looks almost certain to finish the constructors’ championship in fifth place having been caught and passed by a resurgent McLaren.

Quite how Aston has squandered such a head start on everyone bar Red Bull is anyone’s guess, but successive Fernando Alonso DNFs (he retired with damage in Mexico) haven’t helped and Lance Stroll can’t seem to string together clean, points-scoring weekends.

What’s gone wrong for Aston?

Another team in the doldrums right now is Haas. A suspension failure sent Kevin Magnussen flying into the wall in Mexico and the resultant red flag ended what little chance Nico Hulkenberg had of securing any points for the US team.

And with Ricciardo scoring well, AlphaTauri has now leapfrogged Haas in the constructors’ championship and the form book looks bleak: its latest upgrade at the US hasn’t made much difference to its competitiveness and the team has finished higher than tenth just once all season.

Still, at least we found out recently that team boss Guenther Steiner has a car history that’s almost as colourful as he is.