Key events
Lap 23 of 71: A look at the standings before the pit-stop shuffle …
1 Leclerc
2 Verstappen +4.8
3 Hamilton +2.5
4 Antonelli +1.8
5 Russell +3.4
6 Norris +0.7
7 Piastri +7.6
8 Lindblad +9.0
9 Colapinto +2.6
10 Hülkenberg +4.2
Then Bearman has climbed within a second of 10th.
Lap 22 of 71: The lead is five seconds, the same duration as the penalty Leclerc must serve.
Lap 21 of 71: Russell is holding Norris at bay. Leclerc has almost pushed his lead to five seconds. Hamilton can’t gain on Verstappen.
Lap 20 of 71: Bearman neatly passes Bortoleto for 11th, one spot out of the points. After Gasly’s pit stop, Perez is up to 13th – can he get a point in his home country? He finished third here twice in his Red Bull days in 2021 and 2022.
Lap 19 of 71: Gasly has pitted, only noteworthy in the sense that we’re now in a window in which pit stops are not unexpected. Albon also goes in.
Lap 18 of 71: Leclerc now has 4.4 seconds over Verstappen, who’s on medium tires. Then Hamilton is another 2.0 back – while his complaints aren’t unwarranted, he hasn’t made any progress chasing down Verstappen while on softer tires.
Lap 16 of 71: Norris is still on Russell’s tail, not content to wait for the penalty to be served.
There’s also a close fight between Bortoleto, Bearman and Gasly for 11th place.
Lap 15 of 71: Hamilton is informed of the five-second Leclerc penalty. He immediately notes that Leclerc is still getting the benefit of clean air. Indeed he does, and he’s making the most of it – the gap to Verstappen and Hamilton is growing.
Verstappen is informed of the Leclerc five-second penalty and laughs. “I thought all the new penalties were 10!”
Lap 14 of 71: And now George Russell gets a 10-second penalty. He’ll likely lose out to the McLarens of Norris and Piastri. Norris has him in his sights already.
Race leader Leclerc penalized
Lap 13 of 71: Leclerc must serve a five-second time penalty.
He’s 3.2 ahead of Verstappen and 4.9 ahead of Hamilton, who apparently will not be penalized.
Lap 12 of 71: Piastri zips past Lindblad like a Maryland driver on the Capital Beltway. (If you know, you know.) He’s up to seventh, a nice recovery from yesterday, and if some of the people ahead of him are penalized, he’ll move up more.
Lap 11 of 71: George Russell is under investigation for the opening contact with Hadjar. Three of the top five drivers have the telltale exclamation point by their names on the F1 graphic.
Lap 10 of 71: Penalty or not – how does Ferrari let that happen? If Leclerc ends up penalized, they’ve handed control of the race to Verstappen, and he’s unlikely to give it back.
Lap 9 of 71: Compounding Hamilton’s problems – Antonelli is on his tail.
The Virtual Safety Car has finished. Hadjar pitted and is 20th, last of the cars still competing.
Replays of the start – Hadjar spun out after contact. Leclerc was much faster than everyone, flying past multiple cars to pull alongside Hamilton.
Leclerc certainly went very far off the track, but Hamilton also went off. Would they both be penalized?
Lap 8 of 71: Will anyone pit this early in the race, knowing they won’t lose much time because of the Virtual Safety Car? Maybe if we were a few more laps into this race.
Lap 7 of 71: And now Lance Stroll has been asked to stop, which he has now done by the edge of the track at a strange angle.
So both Aston Martins are out, and … virtual safety car!
Lap 6 of 71: The two Aston Martin drivers, Alonso and Stroll, have already pitted. Go figure.
Perez, running in front of fans who would love to see him do well, is up to 14th.
Alonso has to retire the car. Pity that.
Lap 4 of 71: Hamilton inquires as to what action is being taken. He’s assured that people are looking into it.
For now:
1 Leclerc
2 Verstappen
3 Hamilton
4 Antonelli
5 Russell
6 Lindblad (up from 8th)
7 Colapinto
8 Norris … oh, wait, he just passed Colapinto
9 Piastri, moving up after a terrible qualifying session
10 Hülkenberg
Lap 3 of 71: The incident has been noted.
Of note: Hadjar went all the way back to 22nd. That’s not good.
Colapinto roared up to seventh.
Oh – and the guy who’s about to be the youngest F1 champion ever is still in fourth. Verstappen went ahead of him, but Russell had a lackluster start and is now fifth.
Lights out …
Hamilton leads … but here comes teammate Leclerc, madly challenging! Leclerc goes way off the track but is now in the lead pending whatever Ferrari and F1 say. Verstappen took advantage of the intra-Ferrari battle to sail into second.
On the radio: Hamilton says he got pushed out by his own teammate. He’s not wrong.
battling. Photograph: Fernando Llano/AP
Tires or tyres: Most drivers are opening on softs, but Nico Hülkenberg and a few others further down the grid are on mediums. Intriguingly, so is Max Verstappen, who starts fifth.
Formation lap in progress …
Questions
Calling on readers to answer these thought experiments:
1. Are we looking at the beginning of a Kimi Antonelli era, or will we see Max Verstappen or Lando Norris fighting back next year? Or maybe one of the Ferrari drivers – Charles Leclerc and Lewis Hamilton, who has taken a few steps back toward championship form this year?
2. Where does a 20-year-old F1 champion fit in terms of precocious athlete accomplishments? Do we compare it with Pele winning his first World Cup at age 17? Should we only consider individuals, like a 20-year-old Mike Tyson winning the heavyweight championship? Maybe Mikaela Shiffrin’s breakthrough at age 17? Garry Kasparov holding the world chess championship and becoming the world’s top-ranked player at age 22? Justin Bieber having hits at age 15?
3. How did Haas replace Esteban Ocon’s livery so quickly? (To answer a question from earlier: Yes, the F1 graphics team got Ryo Harikawa into the pre-race montage. “Congratulations on your debut, now before you attempt qualifying for the first time in your life, can you stand in front of this green screen and look cool?”)
The track, weather, etc.
Ready for an 830-meter (907-yard) drag race?
One distinguishing characteristic of the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez is the distance from the starting line to Turn 1. Then it’s right, left, right into another long straightaway, then some sharp turns before a shorter straightaway. Then they’ll veer left into a set of long, arcing curves, a short straight, a sharp right and then a near-hairpin turn before a complicated series of curves to take the drivers back to the starting line.
Another unique aspect – altitude. Denver is the Mile High City, but Mexico City is the Two Kilometer High City, which is considerably less catchy. Race engineers describe have to factor thin air into account.
The weather will be in the mid-20s Celsius, which in Fahrenheit is “pretty nice.” The track temperature will be approximately Venusian.
It’s a 71-lap race, so get comfortable.
The grid
1 Lewis Hamilton 🇬🇧 Ferrari
2 George Russell 🇬🇧 Mercedes
3 Charles Leclerc 🇲🇨 Ferrari
4 Kimi Antonelli 🇮🇹 Mercedes
5 Max Verstappen 🇳🇱 Red Bull (1-place grid penalty)
6 Lando Norris 🇬🇧 McLaren
7 Isack Hadjar 🇫🇷 Red Bull
8 Arvid Lindblad 🇬🇧 Racing Bulls
9 Pierre Gasly 🇫🇷 Alpine
10 Nico Hülkenberg 🇩🇪 Audi
Lindblad, Gasly and Hulkenberg all moved up due to Liam Lawson’s disqualification from qualifying, which will place the Racing Bulls driver at the back of the grid, even behind Valtteri Bottas, whose engine overhaul incurred a 50-place penalty for an engine overhaul but in reality isn’t being punished at all because he was 21st in qualifying, anyway.
The other item of note on the grid: Ryo Hirakawa will make his F1 race debut on short notice, replacing Esteban Ocon after the lame-duck driver (to be replaced by Rafael Câmara next year) had a flareup with Haas management at a practice session. Hirakawa will start 18th after besting Lance Stroll, home-country hero Sergio Perez and Perez’s Cadillac teammate Bottas in qualifying.
That leads us to one moment of suspense: Can F1’s media team update its driver intro to include Hiwakawa? The video is best known for featuring Bottas’ mustache, Stroll smiling smugly as if daring his critics to keep talking, and a vivid look at the age difference between the graybeards (Bottas, eternal journeyman Nico Hülkenberg, seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton and two-time champion Fernando Alonso) and fresh-faced youngsters such as Antonelli, Lindblad, Gabriel Bortoleto and Oliver Bearman.
I preferred last year’s video, if only because Alonso seemed to be doing a capable impression of The World’s Most Interesting Man.
Standings
1 Kimi Antonelli 🇮🇹 Mercedes 365
2 George Russell 🇬🇧 Mercedes 242
3 Lewis Hamilton 🇬🇧 Ferrari 241
4 Max Verstappen 🇳🇱 Red Bull 236
5 Charles Leclerc 🇲🇨 Ferrari 233
6 Lando Norris 🇬🇧 McLaren 211
7 Oscar Piastri 🇬🇧 McLaren 144
8 Isack Hadjar 🇫🇷 Red Bull 105
9 Liam Lawson 🇳🇿 Racing Bulls 77
10 Pierre Gasly 🇫🇷 Alpine 42
11 Arvid Lindblad 🇬🇧 Racing Bulls 38
12 Franco Colapinto 🇦🇷 Alpine 27
13 Oliver Bearman 🇬🇧 Haas 23
14 Nico Hülkenberg 🇩🇪 Audi 13
15 Gabriel Bortoleto 🇧🇷 Audi 10
16 Esteban Ocon 🇫🇷 Haas 7
17 Fernando Alonso 🇪🇸 Aston Martin 7
18 Carlos Sainz Jr. 🇪🇸 Williams 7
19 Alex Albon 🇹🇭 Williams 5
20 Yuki Tsunoda 🇯🇵 Racing Bulls 1
Lance Stroll (Aston Martin) and the two Cadillac drivers (Valtteri Bottas, Sergio Perez) have yet to score.
Tsunoda has only run three races in relief for the Red Bulls/Racing Bulls teams while Hadjar was out injured. We’ll have another lineup change today – details in next post.
The manufacturers’ standings:
1 Mercedes – a lot
2 Ferrari – a considerable amount
3 Red Bull – a bit less than Ferrari
4 McLaren – the same amount as Red Bull
5 Racing Bulls – way less
6 Alpine – way less than Racing Bulls
7 Haas – less than half of Alpine
8 Audi – just a little less than Haas
9 Williams – barely half of Audi
10 Aston Martin – a pittance
11 Cadillac – a goose egg
Preamble
There are still several ways Kimi Antonelli could be denied the F1 championship this year.
– George Russell could win all five remaining races while Antonelli picks up a total of just one point (10th place in any race).
– Lewis Hamilton could win all five remaining races while Antonelli picks up no points.
– Antonelli could decide to retire at age 20 and petition to retroactively forfeit his results from this year.
– AI agents could decide to shut down all the race computers for every F1 team in a bid to curb fuel consumption and Kim Kardashian’s screen time.
– Aliens could beam Antonelli back to his home planet.
– The entire year could be written off as Pamela Ewing’s dream, like the ninth season of the nighttime TV soap Dallas.
– Time travelers from the year 2053 may arrive in February 2026 and defeat Antonelli in several races in the new timeline.
Barring any of those scenarios, Antonelli will displace Sebastian Vettel as the youngest F1 champion in history. Barring an Antonelli catastrophe and a win by either Russell or Hamilton, that championship will be decided today.
Meanwhile, Hamilton is on the pole for the first time in three years.
And the race for second place is intense …
Beau will be here shortly. In the meantime, here’s Giles Richards on how qualifying went down on Saturday:
Even as Formula One’s young gun Kimi Antonelli remains on course to claim his first world championship on Sunday it was the veteran, seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton who gave a salutary reminder that there is very much fight left in the old dog yet as he claimed a spectacular pole position for the Mexico City Grand Prix.
Hamilton delivered a superb lap for Ferrari to secure his first pole for the team and just beat Mercedes’ George Russell into second. World champion in waiting Antonelli was in fourth place but remains in position to close out the title on Sunday, although Hamilton and Russell, who must win the race to have any hope of keeping the fight alive, have at least locked out the front row.
It was clearly a hugely emotional moment for Hamilton at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez to finally nail the top spot for Ferrari in his second season with the team, with the 41-year-old’s 105th pole also his first since 2023.
“Thank you so much, that’s been such a long time coming,” he said. “That feels good. I’m lost for words. My first pole with Ferrari. 105 poles, I like that number.
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way. It’s all in the mind. For sure, you might feel aches and pains, luckily I don’t, I do all those different things to keep myself young and fit. But I love what I do, and love is not gone.”
You can read the full report below:
And the top 10 on the grid are:
The top 10
1 Lewis Hamilton 🇬🇧 Ferrari 1:16.514
2 George Russell 🇬🇧 Mercedes +0.009
3 Charles Leclerc 🇲🇨 Ferrari +0.119
4 Max Verstappen 🇳🇱 Red Bull +0.178
5 Kimi Antonelli 🇮🇹 Mercedes +0.193
6 Lando Norris 🇬🇧 McLaren +0.310
7 Isack Hadjar 🇫🇷 Red Bull +0.386
8 Liam Lawson 🇳🇿 Racing Bulls +0.515
9 Arvid Lindblad 🇬🇧 Racing Bulls +0.603
10 Pierre Gasly 🇫🇷 Alpine +0.639
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2026/nov/01/mexican-formula-one-grand-prix-kimi-antonelli-aims-to-seal-title-live
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