Formula 1 continued its triple header in the Americas, this time for the Mexico City Grand Prix, as Kimi Antonelli was officially crowned World Champion.
The Grand Prix wasn’t short on drama, with inter-team fighting at Ferrari as tensions flared at the start and cost a race win, while Max Verstappen secured his third Grand Prix win of the season.
Here are the key takeaways from Mexico.
The first of many for Kimi Antonelli
At the age of 20, Kimi Antonelli officially became the youngest F1 World Champion. What a year he has had after a difficult 2025 season, when he had a spell of not finishing in the points and made mistakes.
2026 has been the year of the young Italian, who, since his first win in Shanghai at the Chinese Grand Prix, has ridden this wave of momentum, racking up race wins and taking the next five in a row.
He’s driven at the level of an experienced World Champion and, even when a win wasn’t in the cards, maximised the points for the taking while comfortably outperforming his teammate George Russell.
Even despite all the chaos during the race in Mexico on Sunday, with the red flag after the Cadillac of Valtteri Bottas’ crash on Lap 45. He saw an opportunity to pass Leclerc and did it superbly.
Controlled his race in P3 and made it to the chequered flag for his official coronation as the World Champion. More to come from the young Italian, whose driving this year has been controlled and fearless.
But he continues to go up another level and improves with each race.
Tensions flare at Ferrari.
P1 and P3 Ferrari started the race as both Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc nailed their starts, but the Monegasque came in aggressively on a move on his teammate through turns one, two and three.
Hamilton held him off, but both drivers ran off the track around turn four/five; Leclerc dived around the outside, took the grass, and emerged with the lead.
It compromised Hamilton, who was under pressure from Max Verstappen and dropped into P3. Hamilton then voiced his frustration over team radio, saying Leclerc should give the position back, but it was too late; Leclerc had already taken seven seconds off Hamilton.
Leclerc was then given a five-second time penalty, which pretty much conceded the race win. Even after the red-flag period, Hamilton overtook Leclerc into P2 but couldn’t pull off the race win.
No, there shouldn’t have been a team game played, considering neither driver was in contention for the Drivers’ Championship. While Leclerc was well within his rights to take the initiative and try to take the lead, the question is whether they could have kept it clean and worked together to hold their positions at the start.
Instead, it had compromised their Grand Prix and what could have been a one-two; instead, it was P2 and P4. Leclerc locked up after the red flag restart and only just hung on for fourth
Max Verstappen continues to turn around Red Bull’s season.
Well, if the season started after the summer break, then Max Verstappen would be in the fight for the World Championship. That speaks to Red Bull’s progress in this part of the season, with the 4X World Champion battling at the front of the field.
Wins at the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia and then in Singapore. Completed it with a third win of the season, albeit much of it came from Ferrari’s first-lap incident and Leclerc’s five-second penalty.
But it was still on Verstappen to get it over the line, and amid all the chaos, he moved from P5 to P1 and picked up his third race win of the season.
In the first half of 2026, Red Bull struggled to compete with Mercedes and Ferrari. The car was not in a position to fight for race wins or be in the mix for pole in qualifying.
But now, there are conversations about whether they will be in the fight from the start of the 2027 season.
Nailed the tyre strategy in Mexico, kept on pace with the soft-tyre starters when he was on the mediums and pitted at the perfect time, went long on the softs and was on the top step of the podium, with Verstappen now second in the Drivers’ Championship.
